


how to influence bandits and befriend them

by delurks



Series: beyond the borderlands [9]
Category: The Yogscast
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Alcohol, Alternate Universe, Borderlandscast, Friendship, Gen, Gore, Guns, Gunshot Wounds, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Loneliness, Manipulation, Nightmares, Past Abuse, Physical Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Stitches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-28
Updated: 2016-04-30
Packaged: 2018-05-16 20:19:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 120,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5839621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/delurks/pseuds/delurks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>a common saying on pandora is ‘to befriend a bandit, you have to be a bandit’. three (well, four) civilians decide to prove that saying wrong. a ‘beyond the borderlands’ fic split up into three chapters where each chapter focuses on the different interactions that spring up between three bandits and the civilians in their lives.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. step one: get to know your bandit (in seven easy steps)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> seven days is a week. a week is seven days. that’s seven days of will strife struggling to recover under lalnable’s watch in his clinic after the cage match ordeal in the bloodshot dam went down. it’s not easy. 
> 
> it’s not _easy_ because parvis has made it his personal mission to keep will strife company during those seven days. ‘what happens next will warm your heart’ doesn’t quite describe what will strife considers as ‘the most humiliating seven days of my entire fucking life’.
> 
> lalnable calls it ‘cognitive behavioural therapy for vault hunters’. parvis calls it ‘bonding time’. the funny part is that all three of them are absolutely correct.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> let’s do something unusual this time around. this is the first chaptered ‘beyond the borderlands’ fic that i’ll be writing. there’ll be more fic like this so this first one is largely a test run. each chapter can be read on its own. i consider these chapters to be too short (heh) to separate them into their own fics and there’s also something of an overarching theme to these three chapters so that’s why they’re grouped together into one fic.
> 
> before you dive straight in, i recommend reading ‘the last vault hunter’ and ‘i.o.u.: one new arm’ for the backstory behind some of these relationships, if you haven’t already done so. i’m working on and planning chapter nine of ‘tlvh’ at the same time while i go about writing these chapters so updates for one or the other will be fairly random. i’m still aiming for a monthly update, so we’ll see how this goes!
> 
> the interactions (in order, ofc) planned for this ‘btb’ fic are:  
> parvis, will and lanable  
> ravs and nilesy  
> daltos and sjin
> 
> this first chapter picks up from the end of chapter eight of ‘the last vault hunter’ and with that, enjoy!

Lalnable had taken one look at him and ordered the other Vault Hunters to take Will Strife to his clinic the moment he’d finished treating him. It’s how after one bumpy, pain-filled technical ride later, Will is camped out on one of the clinic’s beds in his sleepwear.

His sleepwear consists of a thin, black cotton tank top that’s hole-ridden and frayed in multiple places and equally old, comfortable sweatpants, once black but now a dark grey. He has to refrain from picking at all the stray threads out of boredom, especially along the waistline where the elastic is beginning to lose its stretchiness.

Will figures that the less blood he gets on his usual outfit during his stay, the easier it’ll be once he finally gets around to repairing and washing it.

While he’s incapacitated, he takes stock of his current injuries, lacking anything to do while waiting for Lalnable to return. There’s multiple gouges that consist of tissue-deep, diagonal lines across his arms, chest and along one of his thighs, six in all. Lalnable’s since stitched up whichever ones he’d been able to and bandaged over the ones that he couldn’t.

He’d also warned Will not to pick at them or _else_. It’d taken Will considerable willpower not to snark back with ‘or else what?’, remembering in the nick of time that Lalnable is likely the only credible doctor on this side of the Pandoran coast. 

Pissing him off would be an exceptionally bad idea.

That’s if he hasn’t pissed Lalnable off already with the dating forum prank. Will still doesn’t know if Lalnable’s simply shelved his desire for revenge to treat his injuries or he’s got something planned; earlier events at the Bloody Bandits’ stronghold had shuffled everyone’s priorities around.

Obviously, Lalnable’s priorities lie in helping as many patients as possible. Will isn’t so idiotic as to get in the way of that. So he’d pretty much just sat there on a crate, shut up, trying not to make too many embarrassing noises as Lalnable had done his job, to take up as little of his time as possible and let him move onto the next patient.

Thankfully, Will’s remaining injuries only consist of a sprained wrist that’s possibly broken, massive amounts of bruising along his back resulting in a spine that annoyingly aches whenever he so much as twitches, skinned elbows and knees, along with some minor nicks and scratches.

Lalnable had given him an Anshin syringe as well. However, given the extent of his injuries, he’s not sure if it’ll make any difference. Those syringes are only good for certain types of injuries. Still not questioning the use of them, though, as Lalnable knows best.

It could have been far worse, Will thinks. The scene of the Goliath’s innards being torn out flashes beneath his eyelids whenever he closes his eyes for longer than five seconds; every single time it does, he forces himself to suppress a cold shiver or risk pain darting along his busted spine.

He hasn’t seen Nanosounds arrive yet. He knows that Lalnable’s likely attended to her but doesn’t know if he’s sent her to the clinic too. If he’d chosen not to, it’s a wise decision.

All the beds available in the clinic are slowly being filled by bandits who are in much more critical condition, being helped along by their less wounded friends. They cluster around the beds, talking in quiet, subdued voices as they anxiously watch over the unconscious or the drunk ones. 

Lalnable either doesn’t have enough painkillers to go around or he’s just not using them, preferring to let the bandit drink themselves into a docility and become more placid for him to finally go to work. Well, whatever method he’s using, it’s certainly effective.

All of the bandits that enter display signs of having been treated by Lalnable first before being transferred over. 

Bandages plaster bodies, stitches zipping wounds shut are bound to scar, to be showed off someday as proud trophies accompanied by an exaggerated story, arms are splintered or tied up in slings; the list grows as Will swings his bored gaze around the clinic.

Maybe he’s hoping to find a familiar face amongst them. One pops up at the doorway to the room. A wild, black haired lanky figure is dodging people and trolleys laid out in his path, wishing his bandits well as he passes. He spots Will and makes a beeline straight for him.

It’s Parvis, his expression having lit up upon seeing Will and now looking less like he’s just stepped under a shower of red paint. He raises a hand in greeting before casually leaning on the railing at the foot of Will’s bed. The bed creaks as he does so, protesting the additional weight.

“Are you allowed to be here?” Will asks him, knowing that Parvis is staring at him and not in a way that he’s entirely comfortable with. Parvis’ dark brown eyes are critically taking in all his injuries, his mouth twisting downwards at the corners. 

To Will, a whirlwind of complex emotions (too fast for him to pick out specific ones but he spies flashes of something sympathetic, pitying and vengeful in that mix) flicker over Parvis’ features like he can’t decide on which one will be allowed to settle. He goes for none of them, in favor of adopting a blankness that proves unsettling, like the ominous shadow of a guillotine about to fall.

It lasts no longer than a second before Parvis makes an amused scoffing sound that might have been a chuckle. Will doesn’t recognize the sound. 

Before he can ask if he’s laughing at him, Parvis turns to shout at another familiar face who’s making their rounds around the room.

“I’m allowed to visit, right, Lalnable?” Heads turn to survey Parvis but he appears to be unbothered by the staring and ‘shushing’ gestures thrown his way.

Lalnable absently recites without looking up from a clipboard, “Provided he doesn’t knock over anything important, start singing, screaming or encourage spontaneous drinking parties on the premises.”

With that, Parvis triumphantly beams at Will. Will sighs (and realizes that he’d much prefer these faces rather than the one he’d just witnessed).

Parvis continues to stand at the foot of his bed, taking up space that Will would have rather preferred he didn’t; Will continues to lounge around in his bed, steadily growing even more bored. He spies Lalnable approaching, toting a plain wooden stool on his hip. He stops, only just long enough to crudely drop it with a wooden ‘clunk’ by his bed that Parvis immediately takes.

“Thanks!” Parvis shoots him a grateful smile that would have instantly melted a hundred, vulnerable hearts had it been broadcasted live.

“Sit there and stay out of the aisle,” Lalnable grouchily says, proving immune to its effect. He eyes Will as if to say ‘and you stay in bed’. Will makes sure that his expression is entirely innocent. A satisfied Lalnable wanders off to go be grouchy at someone else.

Eventually, Will ponders the real reason for Parvis’ visit, deciding to risk striking up a conversation, however unfamiliar he is with him. He clears his throat to get his attention. “Okay, why are you really here?” He asks when Parvis’ head swings around to face him with a puzzled look.

“You don’t want me to visit you?” Parvis tilts his head to the side, genuinely not understanding the question Will poses to him.

He doesn’t have anything else to do for the rest of the day since Sparkles appears to have everything taken care of (which, contrary to what he tended to claim, Parvis actually appreciates). So he does what he usually does whenever he has a day off: visit Lalnable. 

It’s just a happy coincidence that Will’s here (and Will is the only one in the room without someone by his bed, he’s noticed).

Meanwhile, Will knows that it’s unlikely that any of the other Vault Hunters are unlikely to pay him a visit. Rythian, maybe, while Lalna, Xephos, Honeydew and Nanosounds are definitely out of the question. He’s not so sure about everyone else, since he doesn’t know them all that well. Not that he blames them, given who the clinic belongs to.

“No, I meant.” Will lets out a shrill whistling sound out from between his grit teeth. “Why are you visiting _me_ ,” He says, like it’s an obvious statement. 

At the thought of sitting up, Will’s body groans at the very notion so he just lets his eyes travel over Parvis instead.

In response, Parvis looks astonished, his mouth falling open. He proceeds to let out a nervous, high-pitched sounding laugh. Now that, Will is definitely familiar with (more to do with the type of laughter than the sort of person Parvis is shaping up to be). 

“Out of all the Vault Hunters I’ve met, you seem the least likely to rip my head off and we had a really nice chat back there, sooo…” He trails off, an innocent hope brimming in his eyes.

Will comes to a sudden, horrifying conclusion about the implications of all that hope after taking exactly five seconds to ponder it.

“Just because we had a nice chat back there doesn’t automatically make us _friends_.” Now that he’s just getting started, he finds that he can’t hold back what he’s about to say, none of his usual self-control present (missing since the cage match had gone down), “It’s certainly not going to earn you free missions, cosying up to a Vault Hunter like this.”

He’s grouchy and, considering the last time he’d made friends, look at how well that’d turned out. He is almost certainly taking it out on poor Parvis. The effect of his bluntness is immediate. 

A look of immense hurt crosses Parvis’ face, displacing the initial look of indignant shock like he’s just been sucker-punched and can’t believe it, even sporting the signs after.

Not even a whole second passes before Will feels like a giant asshole, snapping his mouth shut and resting back on the bed (having risen halfway out of it before his body resists that, forcibly balking at the idea of any further movement), fully aware of what he’s just done but not quite feeling sorry for it.

No, he’s not at all sorry for trying to turn Parvis away and hopefully succeeding; he doesn’t need more _friends_ to backstab him in the end.

Parvis almost knocks the stool over when rising to his feet, his mouth pulled back in a vicious snarl, but not quite, a semblance of calm remaining like he’s doing all he can to not lean over and knock Will’s front teeth out on the spot.

“Will Strife, you can go and _fuck yourself_ ,” He hisses through his teeth, turning on his heel and departs with his fingernails digging into the palms of his hands (leaving red, angry-looking, crescent-shaped marks) and a murderous scowl on his face to rival Lalnable’s one.

Heads turn to watch Parvis leave. Inquisitive looks are thrown his way but he ignores them.

Will is glad that he’s gone, not having stuck around to argue about the merits of friendship or whatever the fuck people do to _bond_. He can get by just fine on his own, thanks, as his first month of being on this planet had proven. And no, he’s not brooding, he’s reflecting.

Hours later, he’s fast asleep and is blissfully unaware of Nanosounds quietly rising out of her bed at the opposite end of the clinic, having missed her entering and now, leaving. She slips on her boots, checks that she has everything that belongs to her on her person, then tiptoes past all the sleeping patients, limping the final stretch towards the entrance of the clinic. 

She pauses long enough to discern if Lalnable has heard her or not. 

Once she’s satisfied that he’s asleep in his own room (no sudden sounds of anyone rising out of bed or movements to dog her), she slips out the front door. She carefully locks it behind her but that’s fine, she’s not planning on returning to the clinic. It’s too much of a hassle.

Even if she did, she’d only prove a bother to everyone inside of it (including Lalnable, that’s how much the events of the previous day had affected her, to think of his welfare as well). Hearing all the frightened whispers around her despite Parvis sticking up for her only drives the stake of guilt even deeper into her heart.

Fear could be just as potent as plague, under the right conditions.

Digistructing a technical is probably an illicit matter in the dead of the night, but the Catch-A-Ride machine is well-maintained and kindly cooperates, quietly spawning her ride. The technical appears with only a squeak of the suspensions. She climbs in and starts it up, driving down the road towards Sanctuary Hole. 

She drives with utter care, not taking the turns as fast or as recklessly as she’d used to. The memories of causing Lalna to scream with terrified excitement, Rythian to groan from his stomach flipping upside-down and Will to turn a little green lodges the stake in her a millimetre deeper.

In her mind, she’s trying to put words together, to think of how best to ask Ravs for his help and how it might go. She can’t think of anyone else to turn to at this hour to talk to who might even remotely understand her position, Honeydew’s words about him sticking out in her mind. Everybody else is out of the question.

She’s never felt this isolated before, even if she had been on a solo journey many times. That is, it’d never been an issue, a major one, until now.

Back in the clinic, Lalnable wakes at the sound of the front door clicking shut, sitting up in bed. After pushing aside the strands of hair that have fallen across his face, he pulls down the blinds on the window with two fingers to groggily look outside, Elpis illuminating the scenery beyond.

He sees the red tail lights of Nanosounds’ technical kicking up a cloud of dust through the thick glass, only to let his head fall back onto the pillow and be swallowed up by sleep almost instantly, thinking it’s a very surreal dream of some sort.

No patient of his would dare sneak out like that unless they’ve got some serious guts.

\--

One day later, Will is _not_ glad that Parvis is gone. He’s bored out of his skull. Lalnable won’t let him go anywhere without supervision, not after he almost fell face-first onto the floor when trying to climb out of bed to go pee.

A tense Lalnable hovering outside of the bathroom listening to him piss had been bad enough; an exasperated Lalnable wrestling him back into the bed over his loud protests and firm insistence that ‘he’s fine, it won’t happen again’ is even worse. 

The snickers all around them had died once Lalnable’s head had snapped up with a glare that could have melted a hole in someone.

“There is a fucking button to call me if you need _help_ , _so use it_ or else I’ll ram a catheter so far up your-” Lalnable had snarled as a warning, mouth pulled back in a frustrated grimace as he’d drawn back. Will is not going to repeat word for word that warning but the gist of it is, he’s not going to leave the clinic yet. 

More specifically, he can’t leave his bed without Lalnable’s prior say-so. No matter how hard he shakes the railing keeping him confined in his bed, it won’t descend. Lalnable shoots black looks at him whenever he’d been caught trying to lower it. He’d stopped trying, after that.

And thus, Will hasn’t dared to do even a single bit of paperwork, nursing a suspicion that Lalnable will simply materialize out of nowhere and confiscate his precious black suitcase the second it appears on the bed. Same with his ECHO device, though he could do with checking his email and media feed.

He envisions the stacks of paperwork growing, the longer it’s left unattended. He can almost hear the phantom noises of his feed beginning its foray into unmanageable territory, with paperwork to follow.

It’s a little frightening how Lalnable appears to have an uncanny sixth sense for the going-ons in his clinic; Will isn’t going to push his luck with him any further. His examinations have certainly been done with a ruthless efficiency to be admired and with slightly more force than necessary.

Maybe the prank with the dating site had gone a little too far but he can’t figure out an appropriate time to bring up an apology to Lalnable. At the moment, he’s currently rehearsing it in his head over and over again, poring over the wording and tone. The idea of saying it during his examinations is almost certain to invite Lalnable’s immediate wrath on the spot. 

Will would rather spare his body the fate of any additional pain as a result of doing so, so sure that any apology wouldn’t be received well, now that he’s had time to really think about the consequences of said prank.

Maybe it hadn’t been the best idea to do that, no matter how appealing it’d been at the time. What he wouldn't give a for a time machine right that second, to go back and smack himself upside the head for even thinking of said idea, then carrying it out and thinking it’ll be a right riot. 

He gives up on how to best word his apology for now.

Out of the corner of his eye, movement that consists of black and red flops down onto the stool next to his bed. His head snaps up out of reflex, fingers stilling. He regrets the sudden move immediately as an ache darts down a spine that’s still sore, rippling outwards through the rest of his body that stops at his fingertips and toes.

The person sitting down isn’t a threat to him.

It’s just Parvis, with his arms folded over his chest, his jaw set. His eyes flick over him before they dart away to peer at the blank, greying, peeling section of wall past Will’s bed. Gee, it’s almost like Parvis doesn’t _want to look at him_.

Will feels his mouth already setting into a thin, impatient line at this childish behaviour. 

Parvis almost certainly wants to talk but isn’t going to take the initiative himself if it means having to prostrate himself to any level that shows that he’s forgotten about what Will’s said to him. Or having forgiven Will to any extent.

In all honesty, he’s almost tempted to apologize. Almost. 

So what’s stopping him? That’s a question Will doesn’t know the answer to, despite having the means to answer it in the form of simply going ahead and doing so. He knows he’s acting in a manner unbefitting that of a rational adult, but he’s a little worried of Parvis taking advantage of (dare he say it) his goodwill. 

There’s also the distinct possibility that he’s overthinking. Too much time on his hands and not enough answers that simply ended up spawning more questions.

Lalnable drifts in and out of the room at regular intervals. He only ever glances in their direction once, only to shake his head like he can’t believe what he’s seeing before returning to his rounds, looking dead on his feet. Zombified. Tired. Stressed. All familiar words to Will. 

Will knows that he’s running on only three hours of sleep, staggered throughout the day whenever he can manage it, in uninterrupted bursts. Lalnable’s clearly having a hard time of it, bouncing between the dam and the clinic, returning from every trip even more stressed. 

There’s roughly ninety hours in a Pandoran day and so far, Lalnable’s spent almost every moment wide awake. Honestly, it’s a miracle how he’s still managing to function in such a state. Will is dead certain that Lalnable is taking power naps to compensate for his poor sleeping pattern. Otherwise, Will wants what he’s taking to stay on his feet so constantly and still be mostly functional.

Sometimes Lalnable is accompanied by Parvis on his return from the dam. The two talk quietly in the doorway where Will can see them from his own bed but isn’t close enough to overhear them. 

Lalnable looks less tense when he talks to Parvis, Will notes, almost certainly venting, based on his gestures, posture and how quickly he goes through facial expressions. The surprising thing is, Parvis listens with an intensity Will didn’t think he was capable of, never saying anything, just nodding and taking Lalnable’s words in.

Will is a little envious.

He’s always seen his problems as being his own to deal with. If people happened to offer assistance, Will isn’t going to deny them if he needs the helping hand. It’s just common sense. The downside is that people seemed to expect something more from him after.

Relating to people is something else, entirely. He’s always kept his head down, nose to the grindstone until he’s sure it’s just him and then he can breath easy. He has many professional contacts, possessing three containers full of business cards taking up space in his work portfolio alone. 

His contacts list in his ECHO device is almost full, so the containers are sorted based on how often he needs to call someone since his memory isn’t that prodigious past a certain point. 

In contrast, on the fingers of one hand, Will can count those he can really call ‘friends’. They’re more like ‘acquaintances’ who just happened to have some scant details of his personal life, such as where he lives, his favourite foods, birthday, blood type, etc. whenever Will felt like sharing. Those times happened to be far and few in between. 

Even fewer are people he can let his guard down around.

It’d been a little alarming how Parvis had easily breezed past his guard without so much as breaking a sweat and Will is. Will is _perturbed_. No one human being should have all that power in the form of overflowing charisma; how Parvis had ended up becoming a bandit instead of someone with much more influence is. It’s _baffling_ , honestly.

Will wonders how it’d happened, but on Pandora, he’s ceased to be surprised a long time ago (starting with himself and hoo boy, that had been one hell of a rude awakening and start to his report when he’d first set foot on this planet).

“You want to know how I became a _bandit_?” Parvis breaks into his thoughts with the elegance of someone hurling a brick through a glass pane.

“Did you just read my mind?” Will coolly regards a no-longer petulant looking Parvis, remembering to suppress any bewilderment so that his face appears perfectly blank. Or what he thinks is blank. Hard to tell these days without a mirror to practice it in front of.

“No, it’s just that you’ve been muttering to yourself out loud for the past minute or so,” Parvis reveals, sounding far too amused with something now approximating a smug smirk on his face.

Will lets his face drop down into his waiting hands so that he can cover how humiliated his is to have been caught _muttering out loud_. For Pete’s sake, he thought he’d broken that bad habit _months_ ago. He only lifts his head to give Parvis a nervous sideways glance, fearing what he might see if he fully turns to regard him.

Parvis says nothing, his smirk growing wider by a fraction at such a modest display of embarrassment. He bites his cheek to avoid commenting about it, and on how such a look suits Will Strife, Vault Hunter, snappy dresser and master of putting his foot in his mouth where least expected. 

It’s proving so hard to resist. Maybe next time, then, if another chance ever arises.

“Would it be too much trouble to ask if you’d just ‘conveniently’ forgot whatever you heard?” Will ventures, uncertain if Parvis will mock him or actually oblige. 

He reaches for the bed’s side railing, hand dropping past the bottommost bit of metal, to try to find the mechanism to lower it because he doesn't know what to do with his empty hands aside from fiddle.

“That’s a good question! I don’t know.” Parvis pauses long enough to tilt his head before slyly adding, “Since that depends on what you’re offering.”

“Pretty please?” Will adds, still sounding unsure, only looking up to shoot Parvis an imploring look that seems strange on him. Deliberately ignoring the last part since he has nothing of worth to offer or how an olive branch (with a free white dove thrown in) might qualify.

“That bad, huh?” Parvis leans back on his stool, only to realize that said stool doesn’t have a back to it and adjusts in time so that he doesn’t fall backwards. 

That’d be downright shameful, especially since he’d taken pains to cultivate such a cool atmosphere in his favor.

He adopts the look of someone who is contemplating doing precisely just the opposite of what Will’s requested. Deep down, he’s regretting it has to come to this. Secretly, though, he really does enjoy it when people squirm, more than he cares to admit.

Will manages to not flush but instead, points out in a snide tone, “Yes, I have problems.” He lets a dramatic pause occur before pressing on, “Like any other person on this planet.”

That just makes Will seem all the more _human_ and not like a caricature of a businessman. It’s sort of touching, really, erasing his desire to rub salt into Will’s wounds for yesterday’s comments (because while he can be petty, there’s a time and place for that and this isn’t it).

Parvis ducks his head, all traces of his smirk and smugness vanishing. He rubs the back of his head with a hand and starts to speak, his words tumbling carelessly out of his mouth (the filter between his brain and mouth offline for the time being).

“Well, you clearly like red, you live at Sanctuary Hole, you seem like the type of person to eat instant food because it’s convenient even though you could probably make a mean steak, you look like a Gemini, a blood type A and I’m pretty sure I’m just human _and you’re_ just overthinking things.” He stops, if only to take a much-needed breath. “Oh, and I became a bandit because there wasn’t really any other choice at the time. Fun thing, democracy between friends.”

“That’s an awful lot to take in.” Will only realizes the gravity of his words precisely one second after he’s just let them leave his mouth. “No, don’t you _dare_ -” He sits up, only to want to lie back down after his wrist sends out a warning jolt like someone’s just rapped on the bone there.

Parvis grins, leaning over to whisper in an exaggerated coy tone, “ _That’s what Will said_.” He leans back, cracking up.

He fails to notice that Will’s finally found the catch to drop the side railing to his bed, the only thing between him and Parvis. Parvis actually screams mid-laughter, backing up, almost falling back over the bed behind him when Will lunges at him and almost falls over the side of his own bed.

Lalnable appears out of nowhere (see, some uncanny sixth sense he possesses), shoving past to help a struggling, enraged-looking Will back into his bed. 

“Out,” Lalnable orders, a touch breathlessly from having to hitch Will’s arms up to heft him back into bed. He manages to do so, barely paying any attention to Will after.

“But-” Parvis stops cracking up to give him the equivalent of a puppy-eyed look, complete with a trembling lower lip and watering, doe eyes.

“Out,” Lalnable firmly repeats, apparently immune to this tactic and before Parvis can get another word in. “I will ECHO Lalna to escort you out with his robot if I have to.” 

Once he’s helped Will back into bed, Lalnable advances on Parvis, roughly grabbing him by the elbow to drag him off like an adult escorting an unruly child elsewhere.

Except he’s shorter than him by a head, which just makes it even funnier (in Will’s opinion).

“No need for that!” Upon realizing that it’s not having the desired effect on Lalnable, Parvis drops the look in favor of a slightly alarmed one and tries to shrug the hand on him off. Lalnable yanks harder on his arm in response.

Seeing that he’s dead serious and it’s futile to struggle, Parvis lets himself be hauled away.

Lalnable marches him towards the door. Before reaching the doorway, Parvis pauses, long enough to turn around, blow a mocking raspberry at Will. It causes Lalnable to jab him in the back (right on one of his kidneys, the _bastard_ ) with an impatient finger.

“Parvis,” Lalnable warns. “You have one more strike left before I’m calling Lalna.”

“No need to be so pushy, I’m going, I’m going,” grumbles Parvis, who’s starting to sulk. He steps through the doorway, clearly unhappy about being forced out of the clinic earlier than usual.

Will shimmies about on the bed to get comfortable again, folding his arms under his head. There’s a mischievous smile on his face which he smothers underneath a guise of impassiveness. He doesn’t want to give the game away.

 _Take that, Parvis_. Score one for him.

Lalnable reappears, dusting his hands off like he’s just been forced to shove Parvis through the front door. Clearly, Parvis hadn’t gone without putting up a fight in the last few metres or so to the front door. He’s only disappointed that he hadn’t been able to see that tantrum go down.

“...no respect for my patients, their sanity or safety, that’s what,” Lalnable mutters under his breath. Once he’s by the bed, he absently gestures for Will to lift up his shirt so he can examine the stitches underneath it. 

Tidy black rows and crosses are drawn across Will’s chest in several places, their angles never horizontal, slanting off this way and that given the unusual nature of their cause. 

To Will, it looks like somebody’s scored pencil-thin, single dark lines directly into his chest, including having taken the time and trouble to never let them intersect, then had gone ahead and drawn tiny crosses next to each individual line for shits and giggles. 

Lay out a few more columns and rows in parallel and he’ll have himself a game of x’s and o’s ready to go, with himself as the board. To his relief (still), the wounds seem untainted, the skin still a vivid pinkish red at the edges, like normal wounds. No skin-eating purple. 

He knows that all those stitches are just Lalnable’s precise handiwork, to have woven the thread in and out of his skin, then tied them to the point where he can’t exactly feel the stitches abruptly snag or loosen whenever he moves.

There’s a tightness to his skin that he can feel, especially if he raises his arms over his head or stretches too much. He’ll have to be careful about not overexerting himself and accidentally tearing them as a result.

At least those office calisthenics that Will hadn’t ever seen fit to use before are finally coming in handy now, even if it’s only to provide him some form of activity in bed. Lalnable hasn’t seen fit to discourage, appearing to even approve of the silly-looking exercises that earn Will snickers from the other patients.

It’s also a measure of getting in some sort of physical movement to abate a little of his growing restlessness during his stay. That and it’s the only form of movement he can do without causing himself any discomfort. He’ll take what he can get, under these circumstances.

Lalnable’s irritation fades as he becomes distracted by the task before him. He’s clearly concerned about the possibility of Will’s stitches having been ripped open in all the excitement that’d just gone down. 

Pleased that they’re still holding, Lalnable then gives Will a look of faint annoyance for having figured out how to drop the railing, but otherwise, allows him to leave it down.

\--

When Will wakes, it’s with a very familiar, unwanted and tedious pressure against his lower body, particularly where his bladder is located. The clinic is quiet; he’s the last patient left as all the other ones had been moved back to the dam to heal in the safety of their own home.

Moving on autopilot before he can register where he is and the current state of his body, he swings his legs out over the bed, only to feel pain the instant he stands on his own two bare feet. And not because of the cold floor.

He’d thought there’d be less pain at this point but no, there’s more. Or maybe the same amount, it’s hard to tell. He falls back, collapsing onto his side, awkwardly half-in and half-out of the bed, reminding himself to breathe through his nose so that no embarrassing, pained sounds escape.

Lalnable had also heard the sounds when he’d been stitching him up. It’s not something particularly pleasant that Will wishes to recall but it pops up, unbidden, into his mind anyway. Lalnable hearing him whimper as he’d accidentally jostled him (multiple times) when hefting him into the bed-oh, _right_. 

The button.

Will leans out, stretching one arm towards it, feeling his stitches pull along his front like a gentle reminder about the dangers of overextending his reach. He shimmies forward a little, his fingertips brushing the button but missing, only just. A valiant effort but every muscle in his upper body is screaming bloody murder. 

He lets his arm drop, retreating, regathering his strength for his next attempt. If he can’t get it, he’s resigned to his eventual, extremely humiliating fate. Still, he refuses, resolving to try one more time. He manages just few centimetres more. He extends his index finger as far as it’ll go, managing to press it.

Success! Relieved, Will draws back and rights himself up on the bed to wait. That’d taken more effort than expected, leaving him short of breath, dry-heaving and almost dizzy. At least his busted wrist isn’t whining whenever he extends and flexes it (add that to the list of things the Anshin syringe has been able to fix).

Has staying bedridden that long (even for a few days) sapped that much of his strength? Wow, he should exercise more once he leaves. It’s ironic how he craves exercise only once he’s been incapacitated.

Nothing happens after a minute.

He really needs to pee and he really, _really_ doesn’t want to add ‘wetting himself and the bed’ to his list of humiliating experiences which involve Lalnable. Lalnable’s probably used to it but Will is certainly not.

Parvis slouches into the room, his hands stowed in his pockets, only to start when he sees Will (half-rising from the bed, arm cradling his heaving chest, stitches having been almost stretched to their uncomfortable limit) and dashes over, somehow managing to avoid knocking over anything.

“Strife!”

“Parvis,” Will chokes out, “I’ve never been so glad to see you!” Really needing to pee really puts his spite into perspective, though a past Will would be inclined to disagree.

“I can ECHO Lalnable, he’s at the dam right now but I can-” Parvis mindlessly rambles, fretting more than he really needs to and if Will didn’t need his help so much, he’d have snapped at him. He does so anyway, given the urgency of the situation.

“Shut up!” Parvis obeys, falling silent instantly. “And listen to me, I need you to help me over to the bathroom,” Will explains, only for a bewildered look to pass over Parvis’ face; Will huffs, very much feeling the invisible timer tick down to when his bladder decides it’s had enough of waiting. “Parvis, I’m not going to throw up but I am going to wet myself if you don’t-”

“I got you!” Hands are already on him, roughly hauling him (with a surprising amount of strength) up to rest him against a leathered and thankfully spike-free shoulder and a lanky frame. 

It gives him déjà vu for what is probably the fifth time of being hefted onto random people’s shoulders.

At least Parvis is tall enough so that he’s not forced to stoop. His back is damaged enough as it is without even more soreness adding to his miseries. Unexpectedly, Parvis is also stronger than he looks, managing to walk and support Will across the room, towards to the bathroom located at the other end.

Once they’re there, he gently nudges the door open with a boot, the door swinging open to admit the two of them. It swings shut once they’re both in the bathroom.

There’s a metal rail installed into one of the walls (how thoughtful of Lalnable) that Will half-lunges, half-falls towards. He manages to latch onto it just as he slips from Parvis’ shoulder, narrowly averting a sideways crash onto the floor and the wall; his legs had also decided to give out on him with fantastic timing.

His funny bone collides with the metal, with enough speed behind it to make his entire arm go completely numb. Thankfully, it’s not the arm with his mostly healed but still sore wrist. He bites off the accompanying sound so that it mostly escapes as a pained gasp instead, still clinging to the rail for dear life.

The wound along his thigh strains uncomfortably, kept in check by the stitches placed there, a ever-persistent reminder of his stay at the clinic. Will’s going to have to check if they haven’t been damaged from almost falling over. Once Parvis leaves, of course.

‘Lalnable almost seeing him completely naked’ (whoever invented underwear has Will’s eternal gratitude) is already on the list. He has no plans on adding Parvis to that one grievance.

Anxious hands (rougher than Will had expected, with irregular calluses and blisters along his palm) run over his biceps before finding his upper arms. Parvis hauls him upwards, stammering apologies before switching tact.

“I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to let go of you-are you okay?” Before Will can answer, Parvis has folded the lid of the toilet seat down and deposited him less-than-gracefully onto it. Parvis makes sure that he won’t slide off by checking that he’s actually sitting on it, manipulating him like some sort of human-sized doll.

Will helps out by making sure he’s hanging onto the rail at all times with one hand, not trusting his legs to not give out on him again (traitorous limbs, why have thou forsaken thy master). He’d panicked when he’d had to let go for a moment but had let Parvis move him onto the toilet.

Trusting him when he shouldn’t be. Panting, Will closes his eyes and tries to catch his breath but it evades him, dancing out of his reach. He leaves it where it is for the time being. Parvis’ face is in his vision when he opens his eyes. 

He forces himself to suppress a startled, reflexive recoil from how close Parvis’ face is close to his.

“Are you okay?” Parvis asks once more, still sounding extremely worried. “You look a little pale, Strife.” He visibly perks up, his gaze on Will’s bare, upper arms. “Also, do you work out, because you got great guns-”

“No, I’m not okay and yes, I work out and get your face away from me,” Will mutters, using his free hand to lightly shove Parvis away from him. Tries not to think about Parvis complimenting him because he’s just probably envious of how great his guns are in comparison to his own (heh). “You are _invading_ my personal space,” He says, trying not to become flustered at how easily Parvis blatantly ignores the concept of ‘personal space’.

“Sorry,” Parvis apologizes for the umpteenth time, letting Will shove him away and drawing up straight. He still stays with him in the bathroom though, watching him anxiously once more.

“I’m pretty sure I don’t need you to hold my…” No, he is not going to say any equivalent of ‘penis’ out loud, having a clear idea of how Parvis will react, which is ‘extremely immaturely, like a five year old hearing the word for the first time and thinks it’s funny for the next twenty years’.

“You sure?” Parvis jokes, suggestively waggling an eyebrow at him.

“I will pee on you,” Will grounds out as an ineffective threat (but Parvis doesn’t need to know that he’s bluffing even if the timer is about to run out and how close he’d come to earning a laugh).

Chuckling, Parvis ducks outside to wait. While he’s waiting, he secretly files away the fact that Will has great guns _and_ works out, determined to keep learning more about him through these interactions.

He’s having _fun_ and is sure Will is, too (though if he’d known, he would have denied it). Lalnable might be inclined to agree to disagree because he’s allergic to fun.

\--

Someone lightly jostles Will’s head, jiggling the pillow underneath him until it sits under his head instead of at an awkward, sideways tilt. Awareness filters in slowly, then all at once in a rush that leaves him bleary-eyed and feeling sluggish, momentarily out-of-sync with reality.

Sleeping in an unfamiliar bed tended to invite the possibility of a poor night’s sleep despite having becoming rapidly accustomed to sleeping in the clinic. That and seeing the Goliath’s nightmarish face, over and over again, in vivid flashes that leave him mildly nauseated and disoriented whenever he wakes, expecting to find himself in the cage match room again.

The bleariness and disorientation pass in time, as always.

Will lifts his head to spy Parvis drawing back, looking pleased with himself. And as usual, he settles onto the ever present stool by Will’s bed. Will adopts a neutral expression upon seeing him, rolling onto his back (that’s still sore but slightly less so, so no worries about having future back problems).

“Sorry, did I wake you?” Parvis give a small, sheepish chuckle that lasts for three seconds, no more and no less with a smile to match after. It’s too early for this shit, Will instantly thinks.

His tongue is sticking to the roof of his mouth. It’s a simple matter of swallowing and producing enough saliva to unstick it but it’s still a pain. Parvis waits ever so patiently but expectantly, for an eventual response.

“Yes, you woke me. What time is it?” Will asks once he’s managed to find his voice. It comes out sounding like he hasn’t spoken for hours which is technically correct but also taking into account how parched his throat is.

“Mid-morning,” Parvis helpfully informs him with his usual, grating cheerfulness. He leans forwards, grinning. Will does not like that grin the second it pops up. It’s the grin of someone who is about to say something deeply unpleasant but clearly, Parvis doesn’t think so. “Man, you make the funniest faces when you sleep, it's sort of hilarious to watch,” He casually confides, almost drawling his words out when he speaks.

“At least I don’t drool-” Will snaps, but his mind screeches to a halt as the full implication of Parvis’ words sink in. “Have you been watching me _sleep_?” Sitting up to confront Parvis causes his world to precariously sway before it eventually levels out. That’s a minor improvement compared to back when he’d first arrived at the clinic.

“He’s been watching you for the past fifteen minutes, giggling to himself about your faces,” Lalnable corrects, passing by with a brand new cup of coffee that Will can _smell_ and so very badly wants, with a resulting pang of jealousy.

“Lalnable, you promised you wouldn’t tell!” Parvis cries out but otherwise, doesn’t look like he regrets telling Will that fact out loud.

“I promised no such thing,” Lalnable gravely informs him, appearing to relish his dismay like somebody who greatly enjoys schadenfreude for breakfast and has no qualms about making it known. It’s not all that surprising, actually.

“Don’t listen to him, Strife, he’s lying!” There’s a beat where Will’s hopes are raised that Parvis will actually shut up, but then Parvis dashes them by cheekily asking, “But he does make those faces in his sleep, right, Lalnable?”

There’s a pause where Lalnable looks between the two of them. A chagrined Will slowly shakes his head while Parvis gives an enthusiastic series of nods like he’s a bobble-head toy (stupidly grinning the entire time; how does his face not hurt from constantly smiling). 

Lalnable nods.

“Told you so!” Parvis crows to nobody in particular.

Unable to answer or deny it since it’ll change nothing, Will decides to drink something before his throat and tongue can sandpaper themselves into itty bitty shreds. He finds his cuff links on the bedside table, spawning one of his remaining canteens of water and draining half the water in steady gulps. 

Once that’s done, he levels a half-hearted glare at Parvis.

In response, Parvis offers an grin that is shamelessly and entirely unapologetic. Lalnable wisely decides to exit the room before Will can glare at him as well. Will is just going to put the entire situation behind him, figuring that any intervention on his part will just escalate the situation. 

So he just decides not to provide any encouragement at all. If he’s not playing this game, he can’t possibly lose, right?

Putting all that aside, water is nice and all but he could do with something stronger and more to his refined palate.

“Am I allowed to have coffee?” Will shouts, directing his question at Lalnable, who he knows is within earshot even if he’s in the next room. “You didn’t give me anything yet, so…” 

Please say ‘yes’, Will desperately thinks, to make his day a lot more bearable.

“If you can reach it on your own, then yes,” Lalnable shouts back. Will could have done a fist pump in the air if he’d been capable of it.

He hasn’t had a cup of coffee in three days, something which he considers an utterly atrocious, personal blasphemy. And now for the actual part of getting out of bed, which is something he’s been carefully planning out since his last run-in with gravity. 

Why yes, he indeed has had too much time on his hands lately but what else could he do to entertain himself?

Will swings both his legs out over the side of the bed, over the railing that’s since stayed down since yesterday’s events. He is determined to have his coffee, even if he has to _crawl_ all the way to the kitchen.

He grits his teeth and props himself up onto an elbow to sit up (hello dizziness, nice to see you, how you doing, now fuck off). Every muscle he can feel move is reluctant to work after such a long period of disuse but Will is nothing, if not, stubborn.

Upon seeing that he’s preparing to stand, Parvis rises as well, on standby. Lalnable drifts back into the room to lean against the doorway, watching with an amused smile and mild interest but otherwise, all bored nonchalance to any onlookers.

He is so sure that this is going to end in an absolute disaster but he’s going to keep that prediction to himself. Will will (pun not intended) not appreciate being told as much; he proves incredibly tenacious at times.

Will is going to wipe that fucking smile off Lalnable’s face on his way to the kitchen. He puts one foot down onto the floor. The troublesome thing called ‘pain’ has subsided to something he can push to the background of his mind and focus on more important agendas, like getting to that coffee machine or _die trying_.

Out of the corner of his eye, Parvis is biting his lower lip like he wants to say something but is holding back. 

Will lifts his head to raise a single, curious eyebrow at him. “Spit it out, whatever it is you want to say.”

“Are you sure, Will?” He’d just called him ‘Will’, not ‘Strife’. That irks him, on an irrational level. Since when are they on a first-name basis?

“Whatever it is, it can’t possibly be that bad or embarrassing,” He says, adopting a disparaging tone.

Especially after Parvis had caught him talking out loud, had to help him into the bathroom and back, saw him making faces in his sleep-the list is almost as long as the one involving Lalnable now. 

Will doesn’t want to let both lists grow if he can help it.

Parvis bites his lower lip hard enough to draw blood but not quite, his entire body now shaking from the sheer effort to keeping his words contained. Will’s guessed right in that he doesn’t have the self-control to keep his mouth shut about _anything_ , ever.

“He took his first step! Lalnable, get the camera!” Parvis bursts out, letting out a semi-hysterical bout of laughter like he thinks it’s the funniest thing on Pandora. It even causes Lalnable’s lips to twitch up at the corners.

On the other hand, Will doesn’t think it’s that _funny_ , letting a momentary, blinding second of rage dictate his reaction for him. He shoves Parvis, hard, in the chest with both hands, feeling weight, the coarse material of Parvis’ jacket, then nothing under his palms.

Parvis yelps in surprise, trying to keep his balance from the force of the shove. The shove hadn’t hard enough to send Parvis flying into the wall since that’s beyond Will’s current capabilities, but enough for him to lose his balance, certainly.

He throws out his arms in a poor attempt to rebalance but he’s underestimated just how slippery a newly cleaned floor is and falls back, right into a metal trolley behind him. It’s knocked over with a clang that echoes around the clinic like a colony of newly disturbed, skittish rakks taking flight.

Supplies, clipboards and packaged instruments spill across the polished, tiled floor, tumbling under beds, rolling out of sight or coming to a stop in the aisle running down the middle of the room.

Will laughs. He feels mean, the equivalent of a bully shoving someone into their locker at lunchtime for personal amusement, but goddamn if it hadn’t felt so _satisfying_.

“You are picking everything up, Parvis,” Lalnable says with mild disdain and a matching expression, “And it’d better all be there and intact when I check later.”

“Who even put that there,” Parvis grumbles from his awkward, sprawled position atop the trolley. It’s like a scene from a comic. Will suppresses the urge to giggle; he loves schadenfreude. “I think I broke my back. Lalnable, come and help me,” He whines, punctuating the end of his sentence with a light groan of pain, “I’m _dying.”_

“You’ll live. Trust me, doctor’s prognosis.” Lalnable proves to be supremely unhelpful, seeing no immediate rush to go and assist from his point of view.

Since he’s not that much of an asshole in comparison, Will extends out a hand that Parvis strains to reach. After a upwards lunge, he manages to take it. Unfortunately, Will’s confidence in his own strength is grossly overestimated, thanks to his newly restored ability in being able to stand on his own two feet.

As a result, Parvis yanks him down, only for Will to land on top of him. Will almost screams (bites it off at the last second, as he always does, so that it comes out as a pained whimper) when Parvis’ knee collides with his damaged thigh. 

Pain explodes along the muscles there, sending out a shockwave to the rest of his body that leaves him feeling off-kilter, at one with pain. It jars the rest of his wounds, causing them to flare into an excruciatingly painful, raw existence for several seconds, leaving him unable to move, let alone even breathe, for fear of more pain. 

Stitches suck. Pain sucks even more. Why did both have to go _hand in hand_?

“Ow! Will, _why_?” Parvis shouts as the two of them crash back down onto the trolley and floor, Will’s weight pinning him; Parvis manages to right his body so that he accepts the brunt of the fall’s impact for the two of them, hugging Will to his chest. More items from the trolley are scattered.

At least the pain only sticks around for a minute or so, once his body’s made up its mind that it's had enough and can safely untense, except for his thigh.

“That did not go according to plan,” Will admits, a touch sheepish, once the pain’s mostly buggered off to lurk instead. He rests his head against Parvis’ shoulder before ineffectively headbutting him there once Parvis attempts to get up. “Don’t move or I’ll throw up on you.”

“Wait, why?” That has the intended effect of Parvis stilling, not wanting to be puked on. He doesn’t take his arms away which are currently tightly wrapped around Will despite the purpose of human cushion no longer needed.

“I am in so much pain right now,” Will dryly says, lying about wanting to throw up but not kidding about the ‘not moving’ part since his thigh still doesn’t feel like cooperating with the rest of him. “So _thanks_.”

He thinks he’s being generous by taking the time to remind Parvis how salty he is for getting them into this situation in the first place, ignoring the fact that he’d been the one to offer a helping hand. And how nice it is being held by someone. Even if that someone is Parvis.

Parvis smells like the clinic, which is puzzling, considering he should have smelled more like a wet dog that lived on an aquatic planet raining 90% of the time. He lived in a dam and should, in theory, smell like one. But he doesn’t. 

Interesting. Will decides that’s a topic he doesn’t need to dwell on, no matter how fascinating the implications of that is.

There would have been an awkward silence descending with fantastic timing, but then Parvis (once again) has to go and open his mouth.

“Can I ask you something?”

“ _What_ ,” Will flatly says, almost nearing the end of his rope.

“Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me.” When Will looks up to deadeye him, all he sees is Parvis’ stupid, grinning face. That is supremely irrelevant because he’s not-Lalnable actually snorts from where he’s standing.

Will resists the urge to punch Parvis in the nose, if only to avoid Lalnable making Parvis his next-door neighbor in the clinic, because Lalnable is a sadistic prick who apparently has no knowledge of the Hippocratic Oath.

“You are officially banned from speaking.” Parvis opens his mouth to argue. Will impatiently presses a single finger against his mouth to shush him. “To _me_ ,” He clarifies. “Though I’m sure Lalnable wouldn’t mind the silent treatment either,” Will adds as an afterthought.

Parvis shoots him a thoroughly indignant look like he’s offended that Will doesn’t think he’s funny (and he’s not, even if other, certain parties in the room clearly disagree). 

“That’d be nice, but highly inconvenient,” Lalnable notes, moving at last to help them up.

\--

Will waits until Lalnable’s left the clinic before attempting to reach the kitchen on his own. Parvis isn’t in the clinic for once so he’s not around to watch Will embarrass or injure himself further while trying.

He’s digistructed his boots and is pulling on new socks before slipping his feet into both boots and tying the laces up. In theory, the additional weight should help him stay upright as extra anchors of sorts. Once that’s done, he pins his cuff links to the hem of his tank top. Behold, the joys of having no sleeves. It’s either leave his cuff links behind and be defenceless or that.

Getting out of the bed plays out exactly like yesterday’s attempt, sans at Parvis’ expense, his smartass mouth and the fall. It’d been fortunate that he hadn’t ripped any stitches during the fall once Lalnable had checked them again.

Will manages to put one foot down after the other, taking unsteady steps. The boots are helping him get a grip on the floor, which gives him the tiniest bit of satisfaction over Parvis’ proven inability to do so. 

How often does Lalnable clean the floor anyway, for it to be this slippery? Unless he’s just doing so around Will’s bed on purpose to try to annoy Parvis and him. Probably. He wouldn’t put it past him to do something as passive-aggressive as that.

That said, he is very much sorely reminded of an infant trying to learn how to walk but in his case, it’s more like getting used to doing so again without pain stabbing him in the thigh with every step and sabotaging his previous attempts.

Remembering Parvis’ words about him taking ‘his first step! Lalnable, get the camera!’ rankles his chain, his uplifted mood at managing to walk flying straight into the bin.

He keeps his gaze trained on the floor, hands raised to mitigate the force of falling, if that happens. Once he’s passed the threshold of the doorway, he lifts his head to take in his surroundings, finding himself in the waiting room. Huh, that’d been way too easy. This pleases him, immensely. 

Just down the hallway is the kitchen, which he makes his way to, keeping an ear trained for any approaching sounds of a technical. 

There’s an explanation on the tip of his tongue if Lanable decides to find some sort of fault in him being out of bed. There’s only so many hours someone can spend in a bed without anything to do before they resort to extreme measures in finding any excuse to get out of it.

This is one of them.

Not that he’s going to suffer if Lalnable catches him out of bed, but he is going to want to check on him, given his progress. Will is not going to spend fifteen minutes being poked at and prodded; he’s waited long enough for coffee.

Call him a caffeine addict but just let him have _this one_ and he’ll even consent to maybe having his stitches removed or replaced without putting up a fight. Or being carried back to his bed, bridal-style.

The coffee machine is easy enough to operate, even if it’s not a model that he’s used to. Will digistructs a mug (that’s sporting a teal, white and orange paint job, Maliwan-style). He pushes it under the lip of the dispenser, punches in his preferences and lets the machine come online with a series of clicks, whirrs and high-pitched whistling.

The machine must be _ancient_. It takes ten minutes for it to spit out the steaming, dark brown liquid that smells like heaven. Heaven is deep roasted beans cooking, filling the air in the kitchen with its immediately recognizable aroma. 

He slides his mug out with the utmost of care so that he doesn’t spill a single, precious drop.

Searching the kitchen reveals Lalnable keeps tiny packets of sugar the size of his thumbnail stashed in a battered, almost collapsed cardboard box labeled ‘surgical razors’. Will plucks out three packets of sugar, tearing them open and pouring them in.

He digistructs a spoon and stirs the coffee in leisurely circles until he’s sure that there’s no more sugar left. There’s no milk (powdered or otherwise) to be found but he can do without milk, letting its absence slide this time.

Once he’s judged the coffee to have cooled down sufficiently, steam curling upwards and dissipating, Will takes the first sip of coffee he’s had in four days, relishing each and every sip. Who knows when he’ll be able to sneak into the kitchen again like this.

Food hasn’t been a problem. Lalnable is actually somewhat of a decent cook, even if he only cooked bland and healthy meals, like the kind served in a hospital. Will’s not complaining; at least he’s being fed something decent, a refreshing change from rations, wild game and canned food.

Time passes in relative peace. He’s too focused on enjoying his drink to notice the sound of a technical pulling up outside and its lone driver getting out and opening the front door of the clinic, walking into the kitchen.

Will’s just leaned against the kitchen bench and is taking his last sip of coffee, only to spit the mouthful out at the sight of Parvis.

“Parvis, what the fuck are you wearing?” Will coughs, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, _staring_. 

“What?” Parvis blinks owlishly before he catches on. He points at himself. “You mean my outfit?” 

“Yes, your outfit!”

“After somebody threw up on me and while the rest of my stuff is in the wash, Lalnable lent me this!” Parvis beams at him. “You like it?” He even has the gall to look proud.

The only thing Will wants to say but can’t bring himself to is ‘Hellooo Nurse’. He doesn’t want to encourage Parvis, not in a hundred million years. He can feel something trickling out of the corner of his mouth and belatedly remembers that one mouthful of coffee he’d just spat onto the floor.

Will puts down his empty mug, snags a towel off its hook and starts mopping up the mess he’d created. His back and body (thigh especially) start to ache within five seconds from him stooping down to do so but it’s a good way for him to avert his eyes so he doesn’t have to look at Parvis.

Even skags humping would be a better sight right now.

“Why does Lalnable even have it in the first place and why did you _pick_ it?”

Parvis grins but there’s a modest embarrassment underlying it. “I am sort of his unofficial nurse, around these parts. Comes with looking after my accident-prone bandits. I get to finally look the part!”

“He put you up to this, didn’t he,” Will accuses, realizing that he’s in the middle of raising his head to look at Parvis but instead, drops his gaze back to the floor. Keep wiping, Will, and hope your mouth doesn’t betray you.

“I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about,” Parvis, all cheerful innocence. “You should get back into bed, I’ll clean-” Brown, heavily scuffed boots appear in Will’s vision as they start walking over to where he is.

“No, I got it, it’s fine!” Will says, more firmly than needed. The boots pause a metre or so from him. “You haven’t explained why he has that uniform in the first place,” He hurriedly points out, straightening up, painfully aware that his face is still betraying him.

He wrings out the sodden towel in the sink, leaving it in there for Lalnable to deal with later, washing his hands and looking around for something to wipe them on.

“Lalnable said he’d been looking for an assistant for some time now since he’s not cut out to be a nurse in the first place. Or so he told me.” Parvis hands Will a paper towel stolen from somewhere.

“Thanks,” Will mutters, letting his gaze drift to the various items and clutter along the kitchen bench because the only other alternative that draws his attention is the only other person in the room.

“But he did tell me my bedside manner is better than his, so that probably helped…” Parvis mysteriously trails off, letting Will come to his own conclusion about that matter. “He didn’t have the other kind of nurse’s uniform on him when I asked but just between you and me, I rather like wearing that one-”

It’s hard to tell if Parvis is joking or not because the mental image Will draws is not welcome. He banishes it to the very depths of his mind (surely to be pulled up by his subconscious in the future for one of his more unpleasant dreams).

“I’ve heard enough,” Will interrupts, dying a little on the inside because he doesn’t sound as confident as he’d have liked. The wet paper towel is crumpled up, then tossed away. He strides out of the kitchen, still refusing to look at Parvis (who looks like he’s going to crack up any second now).

Well played, Lalnable, _well played_. So he clearly hadn’t forgotten about the dating forum incident, after all. Maybe he shouldn’t have jokingly put ‘likes dress-up and role-playing’ in his profile because that’s now no longer a joke.

If it is, it’s a poor one and Lalnable’s certainly given him a taste of his own medicine or so to speak.

\--

Parvis is definitely hanging around the clinic more often while he’s wearing said nurse’s uniform. Some of Parvis’ bandits drop by for their check-up, complimenting Parvis’ new look and Will notes that he drinks up the attention like water.

Sparkles did a spit-take and started howling of laughter to the point of having to be carried out by two of his bandits. Parvis returns from that encounter a little huffy.

“I have great legs, right Will?” Parvis had asked. Never mind that he’s not wearing a uniform that allows him to show off his legs. But the point is, does Parvis ever know what he’s _saying_ sometimes? “No point in hiding the guns, at least.” There’d been something dreadfully knowing about the way he’d said that.

Concentrating on not reacting, Will had carefully refrained from saying anything (not wanting a repeat of the ‘spitting coffee out onto Lalnable’s floor’ incident). Annoyingly, Parvis had taken his silence to be agreement.

Never one to let such a minor disagreement bring down his spirits for long, he’d bounced back within fifteen minutes, as upbeat as ever.

Will had thought he’d be an inept assistant but Parvis is actually rapidly proving that he’s not. Clearly, Will’s been underestimating a bandit’s ability to pick up new skills; Lalnable’s actually been taking the time to teach Parvis whatever he needs to do in his absence as an actual nurse of sorts.

It’d been easy finding time these days, now that the number of patients Lalnable has to see are slowly winding down. He claims that the tutelage is under the pretenses of the Bloody Bandits lacking a doctor on-site and he couldn’t always be around to treat them as they’re not his only patients. 

“But you’re _our_ doctor,” Parvis hotly responds, with such zeal and a fierce possessiveness in his eyes that it’d stunned Lalnable into momentary silence. 

Lalnable stops mid-suture, poised to re-thread the needle into skin. He puts the thread and needle down instead, turning away from whatever stitch he’d intended to show Parvis.

Will is glad that he’s not the one being used as suture practice. A slab of a Goliath arm (that’s horribly familiar but Will firmly puts the answer to that particular question out of his mind) Lalnable had pulled out a freezer and is letting thaw out in its own time to room temperature is serving as it instead. 

It’s beginning to smell and go off, judging by Parvis’ expression. Lalnable shoves the arm back into the freezer with an abruptness that’s uncharacteristic of him. 

“You’re free to go,” Lalnable says, with the same abruptness. He discards his gloves and walks off down the hallway to his room, seeming rattled.

Parvis stares at his back before quietly packing everything up. He washes his hands in the sink, taking his time. He comes over to Will, slumping down into the usual spot besides his bed, looking genuinely forlorn. Will looks at him, directly, for the first time since the coffee incident.

He looks about as tired as Lalnable; Will’s forgotten that he cares for his bandits, just as much as Lalnable cares. 

Just like that, Will kicks himself for thinking all bandits are selfish, violent, crook bastards because right here, is one who is none of those things. And Parvis has been bouncing between the dam and the clinic as well, almost as often as Lalnable has been.

Pretending to have overheard their conversation would be pointless since it’d taken place well within his sight and earshot.

“Did I accidentally upset him?” 

Why is Parvis asking _him_? He’s not that close to Lalnable and he doesn’t want to presume so much in that their relationship gives him any sort of insight into his head- _oh_. Parvis certainly thinks as much, which is why he’s _asking_ and he sounds so guilty.

He looks like he’s about to cry, his head in his hands, fingers running through his black hair. Will is not equipped to deal with emotionally compromised bandits, especially a Bandit Lord at that. It’s beyond his expertise.

Unable to think of anything else to do, Will manages to raise a stiff arm, getting it awkwardly around Parvis’ shoulders (never an easy thing when said arm is almost immobilized with two thick layers of bandages), pulling him close.

Parvis sniffs, looking at him with such raw gratitude that Will thinks it’s too much, here comes the waterworks but then, Parvis shakes his head, appearing to pull himself together in time.

“Tell me how you became a bandit,” Will requests, not caring if he comes across as awkward for wanting to distract Parvis in the only way he knows how, by doing one of the few things he did best and that’s _talk_. “And don’t try to exaggerate any of the details.”

“Okay,” Parvis manages a small smile that reaches his eyes, causing them to light up a little. “It all started when me, Sparkles, Kogie and Leo got arrested on Muses…” He starts like he’s told the story a million times before and will never tire of doing so.

Meanwhile, Lalnable enters his room. He shuts the door behind him, changing out of his doctor’s get-up into a t-shirt and jeans. The t-shirt is one of the few that Lalna hadn’t shirtnapped for his own collection while the jeans are a hand-me-down. Once he’s hung up his set of clothing (coat and all), Lalnable crawls into his bed, flopping onto his back. 

A sharp edge juts into his shoulder. He instantly rolls off it, the pain in his shoulder already fading by the time he scoops up the thing that’s jutted into his shoulder. 

It’s a miniature chest, like the kind that bandits kept all their weaponry in, that much is clear. What’s inside of it is another story.

Lalnable scrutinizes it like he might be able to take an x-ray using the power of his concentration. Sadly, nothing mindblowingly amazing happens. He gives the box a gentle shake before putting his ear to it. Nothing ticks or crashes or cracks, the contents inside giving off an odd rattle of sorts.

Curious, he pries at the lid with some difficulty, having to use almost all his strength but eventually succeeds, the lid folding up with a rusty creak. There’s a cloth patch sitting inside, consisting of the Bloody Bandit’s logo, the kind that could be sewn onto a jacket or a coat, to be proudly displayed. 

Parvis had probably snuck into his room and left it there; what he intended by it, Lalnable doesn’t know. He carefully puts it aside and drops back down onto the bed, sitting on the very edge and rubbing at his temples with both of his hands.

“But you’re _our_ doctor.”

Nobody’s ever said that to him before or staked such a ridiculous claim on him. 

He’s had many patients despite barely pushing past his late twenties. He doesn't remember anything particularly outstanding about his twenties, mostly a steady parade of stress, courses, bouncing from internship to internship, location to location, indistinct faces, personalities and voices, bills (or lack thereof) clutched in their hands, ready to pay their way to the top of his waiting list.

Contrary to what Lalna thinks, being a surgeon is tough. He doesn’t have the luxury of time to treat or see everyone. 

Most of the time, it’d came down to money, first and foremost. Social status, second. Success of the operation, third. And a whole string of other variables that factored into whether or not Lalnable would walk into that operating room and do what he needs to do to save their life.

99% of the time, he rarely got a say in who he cuts open and into. On Pandora, those variables can be reduced to a single flip of the coin. Heads or tails. Death is nothing new here. He can kill or save, either way, he’s not being judged too harshly whenever he fails or refuses to do his job.

Only the truly idiotic would blame him for factors out of his control (and really, his last post had been absolutely rife with them; the idiots, not the factors). Is he arrogant? Yes, but only because he’s confident in that he knows what he’s doing. It’s sort of how he’d ended up on this planet in the first place, doing what he did best.

So a bit of experimental skin treatment for burns had gone missing overnight and he’d been on call at the time. He hadn’t expected them to sue him for doing his job in using said treatment to save someone. He couldn’t have been more wrong.

They’d connected the dots, hadn’t bought the lies he’d carefully put together to hide all traces of his involvement. At least he’d been prideful enough to not point fingers, not wanting to drag anyone else down with him when he could very well have.

They certainly hadn’t been impressed at the lack of compensation from the patient (not a very wealthy or famous one to begin with, just a trio of troublemakers) and well, _fuck it_ , he’d never liked working in that place to begin with.

He’s painfully aware that he doesn’t have a winning personality to begin with, or a bedside manner to be praised to high heavens. He’s jealous of Lalna for having the winning personality and if Lalna had chosen to become a nurse, his bedside manner would have won awards.

Meanwhile, he, Lalnable, will just keep being overshadowed by him even if his own achievements saved lives. Really, _tinkering_.

Lalna could very well save lives, if he just turned his tinkering into something worth investing in but Lalna could be extremely stubborn about being converted to a cause he’d never been interested in, in the first place).

Most of Lalnable’s patients tended to request other surgeons after he’s through with them. He’d be lying if he said that it hadn’t stung a little, to inquire after them and to hear that they’d wanted someone else. Never said it to his face, but had filed the request when he’d been away, doing his job elsewhere. Even if he did his best to not be snappish.

Never mind how the other surgeons had a nasty habit of leaving things inside their patients, whoops, have some money to make up for it! Pay up to be bumped up their waiting list; what does he think the hospital is, a charity?

This treatment only makes things worse but how dare you point this out in front of them and undermine my authority, I’ll have you thrown out…blah blah blah, what a load of crock and mindless drivel he’d had to endure on a daily basis.

He’d been absolutely fucking _miserable_ , even though with every paycheck, he could afford luxuries and had paid off his university debts long before Lalna had paid off his. And despite him offering to do so, Lalna had declined the offer of help (some small matter of pride or something else; it’s hard to say, despite having grown up with Lalna to be familiar enough with how his twin’s mind usually works).

Hearing his own thoughts from Lalna about how he’d been lumped into the collective lot of morally bankrupt surgeons (like he had any choice in the matter) had been one of the factors for splitting the poor camel’s back into two.

The other had been the skin incident and maybe buying a few black market organs. Legal methods and decisions regarding the latter are rigged by the board-- buying them elsewhere removed that obstacle altogether. 

Both incidents had just sealed his decision to leave (and to never speak to Lalna ever again).

The story was that they’d wanted to file malpractice suits; the reality is that he’d just happened to coincidentally leave despite being wealthy enough to pay his way out of said suits. So he’d just upped and left right after they’d filed the suits, as an additional ‘fuck you’. 

Leaving proved much easier than he’d initially thought. If Lalna could be done with this shit and simply go elsewhere, then so could he. Having to pose as his twin had helped the process along, starting with getting a haircut. 

Goodbye the ponytail he’d had for several years and hello to his twin’s unkempt and bedhead hairstyle. It’d been a small sacrifice he’d been willing to make. He doubts he’ll ever have the patience to grow that ponytail out again, since short hair has more upsides than downsides while on Pandora (mostly in the hot season and he doesn’t have to maintain it as much).

To add insult to injury, the hospital also had the gall to call him ‘underhanded and morally corrupt’ for the steps he’d taken to save each and ensure that every single one of his patients would outlive _theirs_ , regardless of the money to be squeezed out of them. Ironically, they’d sounded just like Lalna, with their claims.

As far as Lalnable is concerned, the amount of people dying on his watch could be counted in double digits, rather than in the collective thousands.

At least he knows that his patients will be in the right hands after leaving; contrary to what Lalna thinks, he’s not completely contact-less here (friends, on the other hand, are a different story) and on Pandora, his skills are valued. Appreciated. He’d been sick of being told what to do. 

Here, he’s now finally free. _Free_ in a way that he hasn’t been for years. Do whatever he wanted to do, work his own hours, pick his patients, achieve the job satisfaction he’d never been able to get when working in a hospital. 

The pay might be something else, but he makes enough to get by and if not, people certainly owed him favors. Plus, he has enough strings to pull that he could very well write his own little black book.

He has other contacts, too, to help him import the supplies (drugs, needles, bandages, instruments, that sort of thing) he couldn’t normally get to keep his business going.

“But you’re _our_ doctor.”

Lalnable makes an amused sound under his breath. Parvis’ words come back to haunt him again. It. It’d been nice. It’d been nice to hear someone finally claim that he’s _their_ doctor, however ironic that is, on this planet.

It’s because doctors served everyone who came to them, not just a select few or else he’d end up being just like that hospital, which won’t do, he’d rather shoot himself in the foot and let maggots nourish themselves in the resulting wound.

What a selfish prick, that Parvis. Still, he’ll apologize (not directly, though) to him later, once he’s had some well-deserved sleep.

\--

Lalnable is going over some of the stock in his medical cabinets in one of his side rooms when Parvis saunters in like he’s naturally part of Lalnable’s staff (technically, his only staff member) and thus, has the right to waltz in and out of the clinic whenever he feels like it.

Parvis has practically been showing up almost every day, except on days with bad weather. It’s something that’s long since stopped bothering Lalnable. In fact, he’d first met Parvis back when he’d initially moved into the Three Horns area.

More precisely, it’d been on the day when he’d first opened his clinic.

\--

As is befitting the wet season, the weather had been overcast, dark clouds looming overhead. Exactly thirty seconds after he’d made his second cup of morning coffee, rain had started to fall, lending a fine, silken, greyish mist to the region that soon engulfed the roads and terrain.

It’d been the kind of rain that flooded one’s surroundings in sudden deluge where the raindrops are the size of sniper rifle bullets, only thinner and more elongated, that hit just as hard. The rain sounded like someone upending buckets upon buckets of sizeable pebbles on his clinic’s roof, a steady sound with no set rhythm to it that Lalnable eventually tunes out.

He’s not that easy to scare, but he is located on a border straddling bandit territory and what’s considered ‘safe’ territory. ‘Safe’ being less likely to die from the usual hazards of living on Pandora.

There’s a town nearby called Sanctuary Hole, small and somehow thriving despite being way out in the borderlands but close enough that Lalnable can easily drive over to it in about twenty minutes to resupply and have his fill of social interaction.

As per the forecast on the ECHOnet, there’d fortunately been no hail or snow predicted, just rain, sparing his brand-new windows for the time being. He thinks that anybody who’s caught out in that rain is bound to catch a cold.

He doesn’t start when there’s series of rapid, light taps at his clinic’s door, almost desperate for attention. When he doesn’t respond, the knocking starts up again, more frantic this time.

Lalnable pauses in sipping his coffee, hearing the noise and wonders if he should answer. The word’s out about his clinic opening on the usual channels (word of mouth, really) and a legitimate medical practice springing up out in the sticks spreads like wildlife.

There’s no reason to think that ‘ _they_ ’ have finally found him since he pays quite a bit to be alerted in advance if that happens.

He could always pretend he’s not home but that’d be bad business practice, so with a tiny sigh at being interrupted midway through his guilty pleasure, he reluctantly slides off his kitchen chair and wanders out into the waiting room.

Unlocking the door and opening it, he spies a bandit standing there. A wet draft rudely sweeps past him like someone who gives no fucks about cutting into a long line but he pays it no attention, focusing on the bandit.

The bandit’s drenched from head to toe, wet hair plastered to their face and clothes clinging to the outline of their body like it’s an ill-fitting jumpsuit consisting of a jacket, cargo pants and sneakers. 

They start, but smoothly recover, flashing a hesitant, crooked grin at him as if worried about disturbing him. They drop the hand that they’d raised, as if having intended to knock once more if he didn’t respond.

“Hi! I didn’t think there’d be anybody living here so soon, what with all the construction and-” The bandit begins in an obnoxiously cheerful tone, only to sneeze into the crook of their elbow before continuing, “Sorry, I got caught out in the rain,” They explain, sounding far too apologetic. “Anyway, as I was saying, hi, I’m Parvis! I’m your next-door neighbor. I live up at the dam just over yonder...” 

There’s more that he says that Lalnable tunes out. Lalnable stops staring, only to eye Parvis’ drenched form with tentative wariness. 

He’d come across bandits before. They’re poor patients but not the worst he’s ever had (compared to his last job), surprisingly enough, always requiring something or other. As such, there’s a few clans around these parts that owe him a favor or two.

He’d heard of the Bloody Bandits, back when he’d first visited Sanctuary Hole. It’d been one of the first warnings about the area that the bartender there had told him about. Parvis must be the leader of said bandit gang.

Bandit Lord, then. 

He’s met a few and needless to say, he’d never been very impressed by them (had yet to be but he’d never been an easily impressed person to begin with). Said Bandit Lord is shivering on his doorstep, taking up his entire doorway, looking expectantly at him and with a dripping wet hand held out, plus a lopsided grin on his face.

“Psst, you’re supposed to shake my hand, introduce yourself and invite me in before I die of hypothermia,” Parvis whispers and actually _winks_. 

Lalnable’s not sure how he’d made out that he’d winked at him, given all that wet hair in the way. He turns and strides back into the clinic, leaving Parvis blinking in mild confusion, hand still extended out for a handshake that he’s not going to get. 

Lalnable pauses, just for a second, in the hallway to the kitchen before impatiently shouting at Parvis, “Are you coming in or not? I might have some coffee left, if you’re lucky.”

“Coffee? Great! I haven’t had coffee in ages. Never liked the taste, but anything warm will do right now, even coffee,” Parvis rambles with a grating eagerness that reminds Lanable way too much of a certain blond-haired _someone_.

He steps in over his doorstep, taking the time to shut the door. It stops the icy draft of wind from filling the clinic up with more cold. Lalnable almost expects Parvis to twist and turn on the spot, shaking the water off like a disgruntled dog emerging from an unwanted bath.

Not wanting his ‘guest’ to catch their death from cold, he reaches into his HUD and turns on the heater. There’s a distant clanging. About ten seconds later, warmth floods the hallways from above via the air vents.

Parvis stops shivering as the air starts to heat up, straightening up from his hunch. He’s taller than Lalnable by half a head or so but ganglier and all long limbs, looking more like someone finishing their jaunt through adolescence.

His sneakers squeak and squelch with every step, leaving a trail of miniature puddles all over Lalnable’s shiny, brand new tiled floor. He’ll have to mop up all that later, despite the welcome mat and the concept of ‘wiping one’s feet’ existing. 

“Couldn't even wipe his feet,” Lalnable grumbles, keeping his voice low enough so that Parvis didn’t hear him.

Still, Parvis follows Lalnable into the kitchen, taking in his new surroundings with clear interest. “Are you a doctor?” He naively asks.

“No, I’m your conscience,” He sarcastically retorts without thinking. 

What a stupid question, of course he’s a doctor, they’re both standing in his clinic and Lalnable is clearly wearing a lab coat to stave off from freezing in the drop in temperature ever since the wet season had set in. 

He has a feeling he’ll need to shed the coat soon as the clinic is slowly banishing the cold as the heater gets to work.

“Ooooohh, so this is where you disappeared to,” Parvis cheekily replies without missing a beat, pausing in his scrutiny of the tiny kitchen to squint at Lalnable, who’s coaxing another cup of coffee out of his coffee machine. “Huh, you’re a lot more blond than I remember.” 

In irritated response (it’s not like he wanted to be _blond_ , you can thank his parents for that), Lalnable shoves a fresh mug of coffee at Parvis, right into his hands. He’d done so with more force than necessary, causing the coffee inside to slosh dangerously and coming close to spilling. 

“Drink.”

“Coffee!” Parvis exclaimed with evident delight, blissfully oblivious about the passive-aggressiveness of Lalnable’s behaviour.

“Don’t burn yourself-” Lalnable had started to warn Parvis but he’s just taken a sip and recoiled (thankfully not a single drop escaping).

“Could have warned me earlier,” Parvis says (sounding a tad spiteful). He sticks his tongue out to assess the damage, going cross-eyed for a second or two. Lalnable spares it only a second's glance before calmly making his diagnosis.

“You’re fine or else we’d have a real problem on our hands.” Lalnable picks up his own mug and is annoyed to find out that it’s not at optimal sipping temperature anymore. He eyes Parvis’ (warm) mug with clear envy. “And I’m not sure if I’m equipped to amputate a burnt tongue yet.”

Parvis snaps his mouth shut, managing to not bite his tongue in the process. He shoots him a look of pure horror, only to realize that Lalnable is joking (or so he thinks) and gives a laugh. He flips him the bird before blowing on his mug, the pool of water under his feet growing by the second.

He eventually dares to take a mouthful of coffee, swallowing it and letting out the most blissful sound Lalnable’s ever heard in this entire life (ranking just slightly ahead of patients recently dosed with painkillers).

“That really _hit the spot_ ,” Parvis happily sighs, cradling the mug like it’s made out of pure diamonds in the second that followed.

“Good-”

“Thank you, Lalnable.” The thanks sounds, at least, genuinely sincere. It doesn’t bother Lalnable how Parvis had known his name when he’d never introduced himself. His reputation precedes him in places.

“Because I was hoping you’d leave now, once you’ve drank all your coffee,” Lalnable states like it’s an obvious fact, his brow furrowing as he draws himself up to his full height (never mind how the height difference between them makes it negligible).

“What, _why_?” Parvis blinks, throwing a nervous glance out the window as if expecting it to break and let in all the rain. His gaze slides back to Lalnable in the next second. “It’s still pouring out there, surely you’re not that heartless as to send me back into that storm-”

“You’re making a mess,” Lalnable points out, nodding at the miniature lake Parvis is standing in, “By dripping water all over my new floor.”

“Nothing a little mopping won’t fix,” Parvis counters, huffily, brushing some of the wet hair out of his eyes (revealing that they’re a dark brown, almost black). “Besides, it’s just _water _. Not going to do either of us any harm.”__

There’s a lot that he could say in response (like say, what about boiling water?), but Lalnable keeps his mouth shut, biting back any ill remarks that bubble up. “It’s hardly a storm out there. What are you afraid of, getting wet?” He mocks, sneering slightly.

Parvis looks like he’s about to respond when his face creases up. He sneezes, proceeding to sniffle after, somehow managing to still smile.

“Because I was going to ask you if you had anything for a cold, which I’ve had for about two days now and it’s not going away,” He explains in one rushed breath.

That earns him a long stare from Lalnable. He swallows any incredulity that’d sprung up like bile rising. What are they doing then, _wasting time_ with idle chitchat and this is _why_ he hated people who weren’t blunt about why they visited his clinic.

What does he think this place is, a cafe?

He slams his mug down onto the kitchen bench, causing Parvis to guiltily start and take a step back from him. Doesn’t really care if his mug’s cracked as a result, he has several more in storage.

“How are you still _standing_?” Lalnable is already striding over to Parvis, stretching up a hand to touch it to Parvis’ damp forehead. He doesn’t have to let the back of his hand make direct contact with Parvis’ forehead to feel that there’s a fever ravaging Parvis’ body. “You should be resting or called me, I do house calls, you know, even if I do charge more for those.”

He’s somehow slipped into the chastising tone he tends to adopt for lectures without noticing (and only realizes it later, once he’s had time to reflect).

“Well, nobody wanted to take me to you in this weather-” Parvis sneezes again, sniffling rather pathetically, “Bless me-so I just got in a technical and drove myself here! And technicals don’t come equipped with a roof, or at least, mine doesn’t-”

“Shut up and follow me,” Lalnable snaps with an impatient harshness that instantly silences Parvis. He’s not going to get started on the dangers of driving while sick or or medicated. “You can also drop the cheerful act, save your energy.” He leads Parvis into one of the side rooms, Parvis obediently following (and dropping the cheerful act to actually look miserable). “Do you have any dry clothes?”

Parvis slowly shakes his head, not bothering to tell Lalnable that his clothes are still drying out on the laundry lines strung up all around the dam. 

When they reach the side room, Lalnable digistructs a nurse’s outfit, handing the plastic-wrapped packet of clothing to Parvis. 

“What’s this?” Parvis flips over the packet in his hands to peer at it.

“Standard issue nurse’s uniform. Get out of those wet clothes and dry yourself off.” A fluffy, white towel is thrown into Parvis’ face as Lalnable slams shut the cupboard he’d pulled it out of. Parvis peels the towel off his face, dropping it on top of the packet.

“Uh-uh, I ain’t wearing some tight outfit for your kinky pleasure,” He says with a grimace once he’s seen what’s inside the packet.

“Well, it’s all I have that you can borrow. It’s just a shirt and pants, nothing kinky about that,” Lalnable grounds out, struggling not to lose his patience with Parvis (somewhat surprised that he hadn’t done so far earlier).

“Nope, not _happening_. I’d rather strip instead,” Parvis says, letting out an amused snort after. He’d do it in a heartbeat, too.

“Stay in those wet clothes, then. It’s either that or I shoot you for flashing me once you strip and walk around buck naked,” Lalnable curtly informs him. “Which I’d rather not do as I might hit something extremely vital since I’m not that good with guns.” He pointedly drops his gaze to Parvis’ groin before looking back up at his face. “Your choice.”

It only takes Parvis a single second to decide on what option to take, so very tired of the cold nipping at his bones like a dog enjoying a satisfying gnawing. It’s at odds with the fever plaguing his head.

Ever since he’d walked into the clinic and felt the growing shift in temperature, he just wants to curl up somewhere cozy and comfy, his sickness gradually sapping away at his last reserves of strength. It’s a struggle to stay on his feet.

Driving the technical had taken him a tremendous amount of effort, squinting through the rain to find the outlines of the road and having to concentrate on not crashing.

Getting out of the technical had been been even harder, even as the rain pouring down on him from the sky had introduced even more cold into his bones, dragging his eyelids down. 

He’d almost nodded off in the driver’s seat but had come to his senses in the nick of time, something instinctive inside of him raising its hackles at the idea of dying of exposure. He’d forced himself to get out (with a few false starts, so very tempted to let himself fall back into the driver’s seat and rest his eyes, just for a little bit) and walk, to put one foot after the other.

Promising his body that it’ll get the rest it needs if he can just make it to the clinic’s door, raising his arm to knock had been like lifting bones made out of concrete. Putting up a brave front has further drained his strength to dangerous levels. He’s so close to his goal of resting.

He can’t do that if he’s still dripping water onto the floor, though. He also doesn’t want to strip in front of Lalnable, because he really does look serious about shooting him if he so much as shows any signs of stripping.

“I’ll change,” He meekly says, seeing that there’s a lack of other viable options and on the verge of collapsing on the spot.

Lalnable leaves the room to give him the privacy he needs to change, waiting in the room with all the empty beds. Ten minutes later, a mostly dry Parvis finds him, his hair (still wet) sticking up in every direction.

“Lie down before you pass out,” Lalnable orders, gesturing to the bed he’s standing by.

“Yessir.” Parvis puts up no argument and climbs into said bed, the urge to pass out almost overwhelming him once he’s sitting on the bed. He gently pushes it away, if only to find out if there’s anything else Lalnable wants first.

“Running around in the rain’s just made your cold worse. Drink this.” Lalnable hands him a bottle of water, the lid already loosened. “There’s nothing to do about a cold except rest and plenty of fluids.” Now that Parvis is listening, he sounds less harried and more concerned. It’s almost touching, really.

Parvis has just taken a single mouthful before about three, very heavy and thick hospital blankets are dumped onto his lap. He starts, but manages to hold onto the bottle, glaring at Lalnable. “Your bedside manner fucking sucks.”

“Suck it up and just go to sleep.” Lalnable leaves the room to fetch a thermometer.

Parvis is already fast asleep by the time he comes back. The half-empty bottle of water is sitting on the table by him, along with some digistruct modules. He pauses, watching Parvis twitch in his sleep underneath the weight of all three blankets piled on top of him. 

Pocketing the thermometer, he decides to leave Parvis alone to sleep off his cold. Not bad for a first patient, he thinks.

\--

Parvis is slowly becoming aware of a low, somber murmuring by his bed. Someone sniffs and noisily blows their nose, sounding like a ship’s foghorn blaring. Somebody else lets out a low, mournful sob. He comes to the conclusion that it sounds an awful lot like a funeral, but whose? He slowly opens one eye to see what’s going on.

“-gathered here today, to mourn a friend, companion and loved one, and to kinkshame them one last time,” Sparkles drones with all the enthusiasm of someone watching paint dry.

“Amen,” Kogie murmurs tearfully.

“Amen,” Leo intones. The three lower their heads in silent prayer, hands clasped in a parody of the motion, their fingers frozen in a rock star sign instead of pressing their palms together, fingers straight.

Sparkles proceeds to lift up a hand, placing it over his heart and looking grievous, the look of someone deeply gutted by a recent loss but there’s a barely perceptible twitch to his lips. 

Parvis immediately knows that distinct sign of Sparkles trying not to laugh (they’ve been friends since _kindergarten_ , ever since they’d swapped lunches on a daily basis as kids are usually wont to do and what better way to make friends than by sharing food).

“Sparkles, once I get better, I’m going to give you the biggest wedgie of your life, you meme-loving _fuck_ ,” Parvis growls in the most menacing tone he can muster with a sore, sandpapery throat and a head stuffed full of the thickest cotton wool.

“Oh, he’s still _alive_!” Sparkles feigns surprise and relief as he speaks, his immediate smirk giving him away.

“Lalnable told us you were dead!” Kogie exclaims. “We can cancel the funeral arrangements!” He turns to Leo, pulling him into a bear hug. Leo gives a sympathetic pat on the back.

“You three just came to that conclusion all by yourselves!” Lalnable corrects from the other side of the room.

“That’s _if_ you get better,” Sparkles notes, taking a step back to avoid being punched in the gut by an overly ambitious but physically weakened Parvis. His swing goes wide as a result, unlikely to have done any damage even if his fist had collided.

His body feels like it’s made out of lead when he tries to move but also, because of the three blankets piled on top of him. That doesn’t stop him from trying to take another swing at Sparkles, though.

“Stop aggravating my patient,” Lalnable warns, coming closer to keep a closer eye on them. “He needs to get better before he prematurely wears out his stay,” He lightly adds, sounding disapproving of their presence.

Parvis has time to shoot a grateful look in his direction before promptly being tucked into bed by Leo, lulled into another soothing sleep induced by his persistent and still rampant cold.

He has extremely weird, feverish dreams of Sparkles apologizing for not taking him seriously enough to take him to the clinic or check up on him sooner, watching over him while he slept.

Obviously, Sparkles would never be that _nice_. 

\--

Lalnable stares at Parvis, then shakes his head, a small, mysterious smile gracing his features. That bothers Parvis, just a little. It’s enough to pique his curiosity. It’s really rare that Lalnable is in a good mood, actually, rare enough that Parvis still isn’t sure of what to make of it.

“Lalnable?” He asks, sounding as much but inwardly approving of this good mood.

“What?” Lalnable doesn’t look away from the diagram of various sutures he’s just penned for Parvis’ benefit on the back of a spare inventory list.

“That’s the fifth time you’ve done that today.” Parvis puts down the needle he’s holding to level a serious look at him. “What have I done wrong this time for you to be laughing at me?” He asks, now suspicious, squinting at Lalnable.

“Parvis, I’m not laughing at you.” Lalnable raises an eyebrow at how serious he’s being and actually sounds...normal, for once. Not snappish, grouchy or a combination of both. Or anything along the lines of ‘permanently irritated’. It’s _weird_. 

“What are you so happy about, then?” Parvis considers checking if Lalnable’s been touched in the head by checking his forehead for any signs of a fever.

He decides not to, sure that any implication that he’s sick will earn a swift, punishing rebuke. It’ll be in the form of doing his mood reversing and Parvis decides he’s far better off tolerating whatever mood Lalnable is currently in rather than face that.

Meanwhile, Lalnable debates telling him about why he’s so happy. 

The reason why is the cloth patch Parvis had sewn for him currently sitting in his inventory. He wouldn’t put it past Parvis already having forgotten about leaving said gift in his bedroom.

Regardless, he opts to change the topic before it occurs to Parvis (just in case he’s that smart because he could prove unexpectedly astute, sometimes). 

“You know, you can stop wearing the uniform, Strife isn’t that flustered anymore when you walk in wearing it.”

“But I actually _like_ wearing it. It’s kind of grown on me.” Parvis lets him change the topic, none the wiser.

“Your bandit outfit’s been puke-free for a while now,” Lalnable points out, putting down his pen to deadeye Parvis, who just shrugs. That ‘while’ being ‘more than a day’, long enough for his outfit to have completely dried out.

“I know.” Parvis grins a wicked grin and makes no move to change his outfit. 

Lalnable shakes his head and moves to reorganize his supply of variously sized needles and syringes. Parvis takes one look at them and starts edging away from him, even if they presented no harm whatsoever, wrapped in their plastic.

“By the way, thanks for calling me ‘your doctor’, yesterday.” Parvis blinks, then smiles the biggest smile Lalnable’s ever seen on his face, holding out both of his arms wide for a hug. “ _No_.” He proceeds to pout. “Take these and put them away.” He hands Parvis several sealed boxes of gloves.

“Aye-aye, boss.” Parvis stops pouting, taking the boxes into his arms. They’re heavier than they seem. He sways on the spot with all the extra added weight in his hands before managing to right himself.

“And if you don’t mind, go and check on Will and make sure he hasn’t met some sort of disaster when trying to reach the kitchen again.” Never mind that the kitchen is only about ten or so metres away from Will’s bed and that he’s been getting up daily to get coffee with no incident.

“I certainly can!” The topmost box slides off and falls to the floor. “Aw, flip. I got it.” He leans down to pick it up, almost causing the stack to topple over as well. Lalnable deadeyes him before turning back to his current task. Parvis walks out, careful not to drop any more boxes (at least, not in front of Lalnable).

He blanks out on where they’re supposed to go as he walks into the room with all the beds. At the last second, finally remembering where they go, he dumps the boxes onto the nearest trolley before meandering over to Will, who is sitting up in bed.

Will’s sunglasses are perched on his nose. He idly taps a fountain pen on the foldable table (that Parvis always forgets the name of) extended out in front of him. He scrutinizes the sheet of paper like it’s just personally offended him with its existence alone, his brow furrowed in mild irritation.

“Whatcha up to, Will?” Parvis takes his usual seat.

Will barely spares him a glance before the urge to abandon his paperwork overpowers his desire to get any work done. He turns to him, taking off his sunglasses. They go into his inventory. One of his hands comes up to massage the bridge of his nose.

“Work,” Will groans. “I don’t understands how paperwork just _multiplies_ , even if I’m doing it as fast as I can.” Just to show what he means, he digistructs his black suitcase and upends it on the table in front of him. It creaks under the combined weight of all the stacks of paper tumbling out and landing on it.

“I’ve never seen so much paperwork before.” Parvis gapes, his mouth falling open in shock. There is so much paper (think of all the paper cranes he could _fold_ ) that it’s like the table is drowning in an ocean of unblemished white that’s broken up in places with neat waves of black script.

“I’m sure they’re somehow breeding in my suitcase, like torks.” Will wrinkles his nose. Parvis doesn’t know what torks are, but he supposes they’re prolific breeders, like rabbits, if that what Will is trying to get across.

“Who the hell even gives you that much paperwork?”

“My employer,” Will says, sounding annoyed. “They’re not on Pandora, by the way, that’s why they’re sending all this paperwork over instead of just leaving it in my office because they’re assholes.”

“You could tell them to let up because at the moment, you’re sick?” Parvis suggests, very much fond of that notion (having used it a few times on Sparkles to get his way about not doing any work).

“I’m not sick, just temporarily indisposed,” Will corrects, peering closely at him, unsure where this is headed and not liking it one bit.

“Yes, you are. You are technically in a clinic and supposed to be resting up instead of dealing with this shit.” Parvis leans across to steal a page and peer at it, before Will can dissuade him with a disapproving swat.

Words leap out at him but he barely recognizes what they say, unwilling to read anything more complicated than a technical manual; he returns the page, glad that he’s not the one who has to deal with this (because that’s what Sparkles is for, doing all the grunt work he likes to skip out on because he has more important, Bandit Lordy things to do).

“Parvis, you're starting to sound more like Lalnable every day,” Will casually observes. “It is deeply unsettling, I must say.” He gives Parvis an ironic look.

“Am I?” Parvis sarcastically retorts, then claps a hand to his mouth, eyes widening, “ _Oh no_ , I actually am.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t spend so much time around him.” There’s a note of something that Parvis can’t quite name in Will’s tone.

“But I _like_ being here.”

“Are my ears malfunctioning or did I just really hear you say that you like being in his clinic?” Will cups a hand to his ear like he’s just gone hard of hearing. 

No normal person would willingly rock up to Lalnable’s clinic day after day like this and subject themselves to the personification of sadism who is unfortunately, the only doctor within a hundred or so miles of Sanctuary Hole and the surrounding areas. 

Hang on, no ‘normal’ person, that is. Parvis is far from the definition of ‘normal’, in Will’s eyes.

Without hesitating, Parvis leans across to bellow into Will’s ear, “I LIKE BEING IN LALNABLE’S CLINIC.”

“Parvis, what the _fuck_.” Will roughly shoves a laughing Parvis away. “Never _ever_ do that again.” He glares at him. “Bad enough that I have to spend several hours a day being around guns and explosions without you adding to my future deafness.”

Judging by Parvis’ grin, Parvis is not at all sorry for having done what he’d just did. 

“Are you jealous I’m spending more time with Lalnable than with you?” Parvis decides to ask, more to make fun of Will than pose an actual serious question. Will stares, then looks down at his papers. He coughs. Awkwardly. For once, unable to find a suitable retort. This has the effect of simultaneously stunning and delighting Parvis. “Oh my god, you _are_.”

“I am not!” Will denies, his head snapping up to level another glare (a not very effective one, given how embarrassed he currently looks). “I’m just. Well, maybe a little lonely sometimes,” He airily confesses.

From his point of view, it’s nothing to make a big deal over but Parvis is a master of making mountains out of molehills.

“Doesn’t anybody else visit you?” Parvis frowns, not liking the implications there.

Will looks like he doesn’t want to answer, his mouth setting into a thin line that Parvis has come to learn that indicates that he’s unhappy when an expression won’t do. Will eventually says in a slightly pained voice, “...No.”

“Let me get this straight, nobody knows you’re here?” Something soft and dangerous creeps into Parvis’ voice, almost like that one time he’d had offered to go kill someone for even implying he’d break his word to Ravs.

“Rythian, Lalna and Nanosounds know I’m here,” Will hastily says, wishing to avoid furthering the thing in Parvis’ voice. “They might have told a few others by now, but that’s about it.” He does not sound at all confident with the last sentence and resigned like he doesn’t expect that to change overnight (let alone over a week).

“So,” Parvis starts off, slowly, incredulously, growing more aggravated as he speaks because he can’t believe what he’s _hearing_ , can’t believe that he hadn’t been aware of it sooner, “You’ve literally been here the entire week, all by yourself, with no visitors.” Not counting him or Lalnable.

“People are busy. I completely understand.” Still, there’s an undercurrent of unhappiness, tinged with a note of bitterness in Will’s tone that’s been present since the start of the conversation, once the topic had been broached.

“That’s not fair to you!” Parvis argues, now fired up and ready to argue his point across until Will gives in. “People should at least send you a message or something if they can’t see you in person, rather than staying quiet and letting you come to the wrong-”

His irritation infects Will, ignites something that it shouldn’t have, a potent Molotov cocktail of the last of Will’s patience, his unhappiness and loneliness violently going up in flames and smoke before Parvis can say ‘conclusion’.

“What do you want me to _say_ or _do_?” Will snaps, throwing his hands up into the air before resting back on the bed, his face set in a look of honest, bitter frustration. “ _Yes_ , I do get lonely and I haven’t seen the other Vault Hunters to know _what’s going on_ , I haven’t seen or heard from them in days, I can’t exactly leave this clinic to find out and I wish I had more friends like you!”

His chest is heaving from the effort of having said so much in so little time, shallowly rising up and down like he can’t even take a full breath.

There’s a prolonged beat, one where Parvis doesn’t know how to respond to such a confession despite having been angling for it for the past five minutes (any intention of teasing having since been lobbed out the window).

He hadn’t expected Will to throw in the towel so soon.

Will’s flushed face creases into fleeting puzzlement before he gasps, sitting up and doubles over, one of his hands clutching at his chest, fingers digging into the fabric of his shirt. Dots of red start to blot his shirt like someone’s taken a leaky pen full of red ink and flicked it across his chest.

“Will, what-” Parvis is on his feet before he fully registers having moved, knocking over the stool he’d been sitting on with a loud clatter as it topples and falls onto its side.

For all that Lalnable’s been teaching him, he hadn’t taught him how to deal with this; mostly just practical skills (like how to stitch someone back up, how to remove stitches, bandage a wound, set a splint), not how to deal with someone who might be in pain and oh god, _what should he do_? 

He doesn’t even know what’s happening to Will. This is way out of his depth. He can’t go get Lalnable and leave Will alone because of what might happen while he’s gone but only Lalnable can deal with this. But he can’t stand by and do nothing either. He’s caught between the two options, not knowing which to take.

“I shouldn’t have yelled like that,” Will breathes, his fingers splayed on his chest, his face paling.

“Hold on, I’ll get Lalnable-” Parvis lunges for the button to call Lalnable, remembering that it exists (thank Lalnable for thinking of his patients and that far ahead).

There’s the sound of a record being scratched, the sound pitched higher and just a fraction slower and hollower. That’s how Parvis would have described it as best as he can. He’s never heard that sound before, causing something inside of him to stand on edge.

Lalnable suddenly appears by the bedside, holding a clipboard, the plastic pen in his left hand poised to scrawl. He looks up, blinking at the shift in his surroundings; realizes he’s no longer in the side room and is already opening his mouth to curse but spots Will.

He’s immediately by Will’s side, the clipboard abandoned on a nearby trolley with a clang. His pen is stashed in one of his pockets. 

The table with all the paperwork is roughly shoved aside, out of the way, sending Will’s precious paperwork flying everywhere like a man stumbling with an armful of paperwork and the burden’s finally taken its toll on him.

The flurry of activity snaps Parvis out of his stupor because the last time he checked, the call button didn’t do _that_. It mostly certainly didn’t summon Lalnable that instantly.

“Parvis, give me-” Parvis doesn’t remember what Lalnable’s telling him to do, but he’s already moving to obey with a robotic mindlessness that would have made a Loader proud, grabbing items off a trolley and handing them to him.

Gloves snap as Lalnable pulls them on, already going to work. Parvis continues to hand items over to Lalnable until the orders stop. Parvis steps away, unable to look directly at the scene playing out before him.

As a result, he doesn’t remember what Lalnable’s precisely doing to Will but he does remember hearing slow footsteps that stop (almost hesitant to do so) behind him. 

Parvis turns and sees one of the Vault Hunters standing there, the cause of Lalnable being teleported. There’s a deep frown that he can see, even under the purple scarf pulled up over the lower half of their face.

Rythian watches the scene as well, his worry clear in his eyes. When Parvis peers more closely at him, he spies prosthetic eyes. 

Eyes like that always unsettled him because of their unnatural glow and the way the internal architecture shifted every now and then (tiny, irregular concentric circles moving on their own; did it hurt whenever they did so?).

He’d been secretly glad to find out that Will preferred sunglasses and the au naturel look.

Hoping Rythian won’t notice him, Parvis takes a step back out of his way, to give him room to step forward if he wants to move closer. No such luck. Rythian’s eyes flick over to him before back to Lalnable and Will.

“Parvis, right?” Rythian eventually says, in a neutral tone. Parvis looks around as if there might be another Parvis he’s addressing (ha, like there really is another around). He points to himself, falling back on humor to try to stay calm when guilt is tearing open a new hole inside of him. “Yes, you.” Rythian sounds faintly amused by Parvis’ reaction.

“...Hi, Rythian?” Parvis doesn’t dare look directly at him; he doesn’t know if Rythian’s just walked in, heard Will’s outburst or any bit of conversation preceding that. Something inside of Parvis shrivels up from the thought that he might have.

Surely he must have, to have seen Will be in pain, had went and teleported Lalnable into the room rather than wasting time in running to fetch him and explain what’s going on or let Parvis hit the button to call him.

“What happened?” Rythian’s tone is now light and conversational. It must be Parvis’ imagination but he sounds the tiniest bit menacing as if he knows exactly what’s going on. Implicating him, with good reason.

Compared to the moment where they’d met at dam, he seems calmer now. Parvis gets the sense that he hasn’t been sleeping as much as he should be, though, having seen it reflected on Will.

Rythian’s bandaged fingers are giving a twitch every now and then like he wants to help Lalnable but is refraining, as if he knows there’s nothing he can do that might help. Parvis doesn’t blame him (being in the same boat). 

Both of Parvis’ hands have come up to twist together.

“We were talking and I upset Will on purpose,” Parvis readily admits, not wanting to lie to Rythian in any way, no matter how much he wants to do so to save his own skin.

He _had_ intentionally upset Will, if only to get a confession that he isn’t as okay as he thinks he is and to get rid of the brave face that he’d been putting on. 

He hadn’t expected it to have any detrimental effect since Will is so close to being let out of the clinic. Or had been; he’d just went ahead and undid all his progress in recovery in one go. Guilty as charged. Or not.

Rythian’s head turns to look directly at Parvis, his expression growing unreadable compared to a few seconds ago (not helped by the scarf). Parvis is unable to stop himself from flinching under the weight of his gaze.

“It’s not your fault,” Rythian says, so softly that Parvis almost misses what he says. He closes his electric blue eyes (allowing Parvis to relax as the weight of his gaze vanishes), the very image of regret. “It’s mine.”

“What are you talking about, it can’t possibly be your fault-” Parvis laughs, but it sounds so unsure, since he doesn’t know where he stands, in regards as to whether Rythian hates him for the stunt he’s just pulled, is simply disguising it or if it’s something else entirely.

“I know what I said.” Rythian’s tone is firm and he opens his eyes again. At least there’s no weight to it this time, like he’s just let him off the hook. Parvis gets the feeling that he’s just turned all the blame inwards on himself, internalizing it.

Parvis doesn’t dare risk an argument by simply disagreeing in any way (not even a small ‘no’), even if he finds it hard to understand why a friend would intentionally do that to someone (to Will especially) in the first place.

“What did you argue about?” He eventually asks, adding quickly just in case he’s crossing an invisible line he shouldn’t be, because in every conversation, there’s always one even if both parties remained unaware of it, “You don’t have to answer, I’m just curious, s’all.”

In front of them, Lalnable is snipping away, stopping only to pull black thread in and out of Will’s skin like there’s no time left (every second precious), keeping up a low commentary that has Will nodding along, understanding and not, even as his eyes eventually slide shut.

Will must be in so much pain now, his expression contorted, beads of sweat dripping down his forehead and down his face. His knuckles are gripping the sheets to the point where Parvis imagines his bones splintering under the force of his grip. 

He turns his gaze to Rythian because the sight causes his insides to churn like they’ve have been liquified, pooling deep in his gut, unable to stomach Will being in pain. It’s ironic how he can stare down a wound where broken bones are sticking out of it with no problems whatsoever, but he can’t stand seeing friend being in pain.

It feels like Rythian isn’t going to answer his inquiry but a moment later, shame (how very familiar) flashes over Rythian’s face. He starts to talk in a low voice.

“There was an argument amongst us. He played the passive-bystander,” He looks away to peer at the tile beneath his boots with sudden interest. “I took his silence as agreement with another party and left the room. I was mad at him and the others,” Parvis is careful to notice the presence of that ‘was’, “So I didn’t visit until today.”

A beat of silence. And then, as usual, Parvis decides to open his mouth, refusing to let his guilt and fear cow him into idly standing by because _what the fuck_.

“And you’ve finally forgiven him enough to finally _visit_?” He snaps at him, indignant with the bullshit Rythian’s feeding him, “Because it’s not fair to Will, he didn’t do anything in the first place for you to be mad at him!”

Fuck the loophole in his line of thought (standing by and doing nothing is still something) and hoping Rythian doesn't notice it, Parvis closes his mouth, turning to look Rythian square in the eye, a white-hot, righteous fury burning in his own gaze.

Any fear Parvis has of him has long since jumped ship like it knows there’s an iceberg ahead, the ship’s course set to collide with it, tampered with at the last second.

Rythian looks taken aback, his gaze narrowing, intent brewing beneath the surface of his expression. Rythian could almost certainly annihilate him on the spot if he chose to, even if Lalnable’s presence should have been an obvious deterrent.

Parvis expects him to react with an explosiveness like an incendiary barrel being shot at but unexpectedly, Rythian’s shoulders slump and the fight drains away. Rythian just looks so worn out then that it induces a stab of sympathy in Parvis.

Now Parvis is the one taken aback. He drops his trembling hand from where he’d raised to it draw a gun from his digistruct module. He’s glad it hadn’t come to that because if they’d started fighting, there’s no guarantee that either of them would have walked out unscathed.

“You’re right, he didn’t do anything. I shouldn’t have been mad at him in the first place since there wasn’t,” He gestures, vaguely, with one bandaged hand and Parvis doesn’t know what it means, “Anything he could have done.” It looks like Rythian wants to say more but he appears to catch himself and remains silent. 

Fine by Parvis.

“You should have visited sooner. He’s been…” _So lonely_ and in so much pain, so where were _you_ when he needed you? Parvis wants to say, even if he and Lalnable had been around to stave off that whenever they could, but they couldn’t always be around compared to Rythian and the other Vault Hunters. “Unhappy,” is what he settles on saying instead. That’s also pretty apt.

It’s likely that Rythian knows anyway, despite not having heard it being said out loud.

“I’m sorry.” It sounds genuine and there is enough remorse in Rythian’s eyes to do for the both of them. That’s enough for Parvis.

“You should be saying that to him, not me,” He says, surprising Rythian. He silently adds ‘me too’. 

Rythian blinks, like he hadn’t expected any bit of wisdom to have ever come out of Parvis’ mouth.

Lalnable interrupts them by turning around, his gloves bloody and looking more haggard than he usually did. “You two are being very _loud_.”

Will’s gone still on the bed, his face turned away, an arm thrown over his eyes, teeth grit and breathing hard, stitches bulging, shining black thread strewn on the sheets besides him.

Parvis interprets Lalnable’s words as a subtle hint for ‘can you two talk somewhere else?’, while Rythian frowns as if not liking his tone one bit. Parvis smoothly steps between them, nudging Rythian’s elbow.

“Let’s go to the kitchen and drink all of his coffee, Rythian, he won’t like that at all,” Parvis jokes, flashing Rythian a tentative smile.

“Just go already, I don’t give a fuck _where_ , so long as you’re nowhere near Will,” Lalnable snaps (see, Parvis had been right about the hint). “And don’t you dare drink all the coffee or else I’ll make you pay for the next round of supplies,” He adds, in a slightly less caustic tone, not waiting to see if they go before tending to Will once more.

“Is it good coffee?” Rythian asks, allowing Parvis to lead him out of the room and towards the kitchen, despite knowing where it’s located. “Better than what Ravs comes up with, I hope.”

“I can vouch that it’s _great_ coffee,” Parvis brightly informs him, refusing to think of what’s behind them or turn around.

The two wait around in the kitchen, making small talk until Lalnable flops down into one of the kitchen chairs next to Rythian. Parvis rises, tending to the coffee machine. He brings over a mug for Lalnable, also placing the containers of milk and sugar packets in front of him.

Lalnable doesn’t even bother with the two (when he usually did), simply waiting until his coffee has cooled down before knocking back half of it in one go like it’s a bottle of rakk ale. Rythian and Parvis look on, glancing uncertainly at each other before back to Lalnable.

He takes a deep breath, letting it out and gathers himself back up, looking run down but for the most part, seems back to normal once more (the mood that Parvis is most familiar with). Crisis averted, then.

“Is Will going to be okay?” Rythian ventures, fingers tugging his scarf back up into place (much to Parvis’ disappointment because all those scars look _so cool_ ). Lalnable glances his way. He eventually returns his gaze to his half-filled mug.

“Will tore open a couple of his stitches that I redid. I gave him a shot of tranquilizer and a painkiller.” Lalnable gives Parvis a look that promises a later lecture once Rythian’s gone. Parvis gulps and avoids looking directly at him, not looking forward to it. “He’s sleeping now, better than he has been in the previous nights he’s been here.”

Guilt passes over Rythian’s face but it’s gone just as soon as it’d appeared. It’s like he doesn’t want Lalnable to pick up on it. Parvis thinks it’s good that Lalnable’s this tired or else he’d have something to say about that. 

“That’s...good to know.”

“How’s Lalna doing?” Lalnable asks, turning his serious gaze upon Rythian with the change in topic. “You said you had an argument with others and by ‘others’, I assume includes him. I’d like to know about what.” So he had been listening, after all, even if for all intents and purposes, hadn’t seemed like he’d been.

“Why?” Rythian puts down his mug to reflect Lalnable’s seriousness back at him with an identical look of his own, sounding cagey all of the sudden.

“And don’t you dare say anything along the lines of it ‘being strictly Vault Hunter business’, either.” Lalnable also puts down his mug, crossing his arms over his chest. “If it affects Lalna, it’s well within my right to know what’s going on.”

The temperature in the room drops several degrees. Parvis tries to pretend it hasn’t, listening in even if he has no idea what’s going on.

“Ah, so you do care for Lalna,” Rythian begins in a mild tone but appears to stop himself from saying anything else, remembering that Parvis is still in the room. He inclines his head towards him.

“Parvis, go check on Will,” Lalnable automatically orders, not even looking at him. 

He really wants to stay, to hear what’s going on (he’ll keep quiet about it, really, like every other time Will or Lalnable had told him something personal, see, he can keep his mouth shut). 

The look Lalnable shoots his way at his hesitation at leaving _scares_ him. He ends up scuttling out of the room like a cowed dog with its tail between its legs. He left his mug of coffee behind but that’s fine, he doesn’t want to draw any of their newly stoked ire. 

Even he can’t pretend that there isn’t that much tension in the room.

Not that he wants to get caught in the middle of Lalnable and Rythian since their combined wrath isn’t worth the price of knowing what they’re talking about. It’s not like he has anybody to gossip to about it. 

When he returns to the room that Will is sleeping in, he notices that in the process of helping Will, Lalnable had knocked all the paperwork off the table Will had been using. Pages are scattered all over the floor and in the most obnoxious of places (like under the other beds, between trolleys). 

Parvis starts gathering them all up in silence, using the time to think about what Rythian had said.

For the most part, he thinks that Rythian had been in the wrong, had been right to apologize. Not Will. He could be biased though, since he genuinely considers Will a friend and any slight against Will is one he personally takes.

Especially considering that friends just couldn’t do that sort of _thing_ to one another.

He’s being horribly naive right now, but it’s something he tries to believe in, even now as his belief in it wavers, having seen first-hand consequences of people, being well, people. It hurts to think of Will being lonely and it had never exactly occurred to him, not until Will had admitted it out loud.

Really, he should have noticed it sooner but Will had hid it so well.

Is this what had been bothering him on the first day when they’d gotten off on the wrong foot when Parvis had walked in? 

He hadn’t been able to shake the gut feeling of Will needing him because while he’d hidden it, at the same time, it’d been painfully obvious that he’d needed someone to talk to.

Parvis had quietly stepped into the role, even if it hadn’t occurred to Will that he’d needed someone, at the time. He’s long forgiven Will for what Will had said to him in their second chat, now completely understanding why he’d lashed out at him.

He’s still feeling guilty now, even for provoking Will into such a state (not knowing that Will had come dangerously close to his breaking point, anyway).

Parvis is sure that’s all the pages he’d picked up. He’s been over every nook and cranny in the room. He piles all the paperwork he’d gathered onto one of the empty beds and stacks them into what he thinks is the right order. Will can sort it out later if they're incorrect.

Right now, Will’s sleeping on his side, an arm thrown out between the side railing (that’s since been pulled back up in place), the other curled around an invisible pillow. His expression is peaceful in his sleep instead of troubled, as it’d been for the past few days whenever Parvis had come across him sleeping.

He tucks the blanket around him in more securely. The last thing Will needs now is a cold from how cool the room is and Parvis knows how much a cold can suck.

He (and Lalnable, to an extent) had lied about Will making funny faces in his sleep; his expressions had been fearful and anxious and once, of such pure terror that he’d been unable to resist jostling Will awake by adjusting his pillow, indirectly freeing him from his nightmare.

Now that Parvis’ got all the papers neatly organized, he wants the black suitcase that the paperwork had come in, but he can’t find it anywhere nearby. 

Lalnable must have put it back into Will’s inventory, along with the pen he’d been using. Parvis finds the cuff links (next to the folded up sunglasses) on the bedside table, absently fishing out the suitcase; in his absent-mindedness, he accidentally pulls out Will’s mangled suit and tie as well and his blood turns to ice.

His heart gives a painful squeeze, a twinge of pain dulled by the sudden cold in his veins, then breaks.

The suit is torn in several places. There’s wide, diagonal gashes having ripped lines through the fabric of the red shirt, black waistcoat and silk tie. There’s one on the leg of the trousers, where Will’s thigh would have been. It explains the injuries. 

Parvis had heard rumors about the Siren traveling around with Will; this is what she’d _done_ to him (and it’s likely he hadn’t deserved any of it and they don’t deserve to have _him_ ). 

And in that instant, Parvis is consumed with the thought of finding her, dragging her back by the hair, shoving her forwards once they’re by Will so she can see what she’s done, to drag an apology out of her (doesn’t matter if it’s genuine or not, it’s an _apology_ ); she hadn’t shown up to the clinic again, not after she’d initially arrived and stayed overnight.

Her arrival had unsettled most of his bandits in the room. 

They’d shut up when Parvis had told them to ‘grow the fuck up, she hurt herself saving all your dumb asses, mine included and our dam’. He wishes he could take back his words, a vicious rage clouding his thoughts and vision that he can almost taste like the bitter tang of sudden thunder on the horizon.

He is _angry_ , not for his own sake, but for one Will Strife. But Parvis knows that it won’t solve or accomplish anything, so he lets the emotion fizzle out since there’s no outcome to direct it towards and its conduit unwilling for the time being.

Also, he can’t really take a Siren head-on. He knows his own limits and where they lie. He’s also not that suicidal.

What he can do instead, is help Will out as best as he can. Parvis carefully files all the paperwork back into the suitcase, managing to close it and puts it back into Will’s inventory. Once that’s done, he finds his faithful stool and lifts it so that it’s sitting on four legs once more.

He takes a seat, finds his sewing kit (hadn’t been kidding about making his own clothes) in his inventory, makes himself comfortable and pulls Will’s suit and tie into his lap. 

It’s a good thing he adores red (uses it for his bandannas, a few of his jackets and shirts), so he has plenty of red thread in various shades available. Same with black thread, which he intends to use for Will’s waistcoat, tie and trousers. It’s one of the things he likes buying with the money earned from his gang’s music.

Parvis doesn’t buy much else, even if people had the impression that he’s an impulsive buyer. Being on this planet has given him the frame of mind to decide on his needs versus his wants when being on Muses hadn’t. He’s grown since then. If he could turn back time, he wishes he could pass that on, amongst other things, to his past self.

Scissors, a needle, a steady hand and patience is all that Parvis needs to begin. He does so, concentrating on his self-imposed task with such resolve that when Rythian and Lalnable walk in, they take one look at his hunched form and leave him be.

The two are satisfied with whatever they’d talked about, now much more agreeable with one another. Lalnable moves to follow Rythian out of the clinic, the two mutually agreeing to not disturb Parvis, despite it being well past visiting hours.

Parvis doesn’t notice Will stirring until Will blinks and sits up, wincing as his new (now more tightly placed, by just a fraction) stitches tug on the skin around his chest, never a very pleasant sensation to wake up to.

“What time is it?” He rasps like he’s just risen from the sleep of the dead.

Parvis’ head snaps up at the sound of Will’s familiar, deep but raspy voice. He puts down the needle and thread (missing the tie slips out of his lap, falling to the ground beside his foot), digistructing an unopened bottle of water that he snaps the lid off of and hands to Will. 

Will gratefully takes it and slowly sips from it.

“It’s evening,” Parvis quietly says, noting the clock in the corner of his HUD. As he sits back down, the stool shifts, by a miniscule amount, but it’s enough to land on the edge of the tie and trap it underneath a leg.

“That late, huh. I must have been asleep for quite a while.” Will yawns, looking like he’d rather fall asleep again but shakes it off. “Where is that bed remote...” He tries to find the remote to raise the bed higher, so he can properly sit up. Parvis finds it on the table and thumbs one of the buttons for him until Will motions for him to stop.

“You’re welcome,” Parvis says, before Will can thank him. Will puts the bottle of water onto the table, looking around the clinic as if expecting to see someone else present.

“Where’s Rythian?” Will asks, clearly disappointed to see that he’s not present. On the other hand, he feels well-rested. Minus the event preceding slipping into a medicated sleep but that sleep’s done him some good; for the first time in days, he’s calm and not in any sort of pain.

“He went back to Sanctuary Hole.”

“But he visited, right? Or can I chalk that up to some sort of nice dream where all my friends aren’t fighting each other and I’m done with my report?” Will is sarcastic, appearing to question his own memory. It sort of pains Parvis to hear him say that. 

It says quite a bit about Will to have remembered, especially since he’d been suffering at the time, in so much pain that Parvis hadn’t honestly expected Will to even recall Rythian’s fashionably late presence.

Parvis interprets it as him being self-deprecating (if that’s even the right word for it). He could lie and say that Rythian had never visited, reel Will in deeper, force the rift between him and the other Vault Hunters to grow wider, up until the day Will finds out he’d been lied to. 

It’s all so that he’ll be better friends with Will (just like with Lalnable).

He’s not a hypocrite and that is a line he refuses to cross, so instead, he tells him (unable to stop himself from sounding unhappy and resigned about doing so), “Yeah, he did visit you. You weren’t hallucinating it or anything.”

Will looks like he doesn’t know what to do with the news, so very lost and Parvis’ heart twists, to see him like this, to have never had friends looking out for him to the point where he’s so unused to the concept of _friendship_ and its effects on his life.

He’d been thinking about what Will had said to him, while he’d been working.

“You said something about us being ‘friends’ before you went and ripped your stitches,” Parvis casually recalls, choosing his words with care and looking Will right in the eye, exchanging his typical, carefree tone for one that sounds like he’s not fucking around, “Does that really mean we’re really friends now?”

It’s odd to see Parvis this serious that Will wishes he’s like this more often, think of the effect on _people_ he could have (sans him).

Will hesitates to answer, lifting his head to look straight at him, one of his hands anxiously rising to feel for the sunglasses that aren’t there on his head. He realizes and lets his hand fall instead, to rest in his lap.

That earns a disappointed sigh from Parvis. A whole host of emotions (disappointment, mostly) well up, jostling to be the dominant one to rule his mood for the next few hours. He supposes he can stop trying to be friends with Will now. From the very start, Will had been right to warn him: they weren’t cut out to be friends.

At the very least, he’ll finish repairing Will’s suit and tie for him since he’s not a bastard as to half-ass or abandon an important job like this one, even if finishing it has now become just a little bit more harder.

“Well, what do you know, I guess we are,” Will says, breaking into his thoughts with the air of someone patching up a broken window with infinite amounts of patience and duct tape. There’s a small smile on his face that Parvis sees when he looks at Will.

The needle and thread in his hands fall onto the suit and tie. He starts to tear up. It’s all he’s ever _wanted_ , ever since he’d sat down next to Will, initially unsure about why, just following his gut feeling and wondering if it’d been the ‘right’ thing to do but Will seriously considers him a friend now.

His heart could explode right now and he’d die _happy_.

“Parvis, we’ve been through this, no crying,” Will sighs. It’s then that he finally spots what is in Parvis’ lap, squinting at the familiar sight. “Why is my _suit_ in your lap-did you go through my _things_? You are committing a heinous crime right now, that suit is only to be fixed by a professional tailor, so why-”

Oh, _shit_.

“I can explain,” Parvis quickly says, wiping his eyes on the back of his jacket’s sleeve. He holds both of his hands up, to placate as Will huffily falls back onto the bed. “And I’m a professional at this, you can trust me!” 

Parvis stands up to put the suit onto Will’s bed to show off his handiwork and accidentally trods on the tie, stumbling as he slips on it. Silk, Parvis’ entire body weight, the leg of the stool, the limit of the tie’s limited ability to stretch that far and clinic floor tiles don’t mesh well together. 

The result is a loud, tearing sound. 

When Will and Parvis both glance down, they can both see that the tie’s tear has grown even larger under Parvis’ boot. Horrified, he glances up at Will to see how he reacts.

“ _Parvis_.” Will closes his eyes with the air of someone who can’t believe what he’s just seen and heard but is unable to deny reality.

“I can fix it!” Parvis stoops down to shove the stool off the tie and pick it up. When he examines it, he’s sure that he can fix it, the tear isn’t that large at all. Will is not at all confident in his ability to do so. 

_His tie_. He’s had that particular one for five years now. It’d been through thick and thin, on top of literal hell and this is how it dies: at the hands of one incompetent, meddling, admittedly not bad-looking Bandit Lord who is still a fuck-up and is one of the few banes of his existence. He’s probably being too generous with that description.

“It breaks my heart to do this-” Will starts, looking and sounding grave like he’s announcing the verdict of a trial that’s dragged on for months.

“Don’t do it, Will, I’m _begging_ you,” Parvis pleads like his life is on the line (like he’s the one being sentenced), “Don’t do what I think you’re about to do-”

“But I hereby renounce our friendship-”

“La la la la la la, I can’t hear you, you’re not doing what I think you’re doing!” Parvis sings, clapping both of his hands over his ears and snapping his eyes shut but it’s in vain, he can still hear Will through his hands.

“We are no longer _besties_ ,” Will declares, leaning back with a smirk on his face, satisfied with the outcome that’s just been handed down. He turns away from Parvis, rolling onto his other side so that he can’t see him at all. His wrist doesn't even give a faint twinge at the motions.

“Nooooo, you can’t do that!” Parvis falls to his knees, everything in his lap slipping onto the floor. “We’ve just only vowed to be friends!” He protests, distressed by this new, unexpected development. 

He takes his hands away from his ears, leveling his kicked puppy look at Will. Will has turned his back on him so it’s rendered ineffective (perhaps having anticipated it).

“I so can and have just done so!” Will’s shoulders are shaking like he’s silently laughing at the pure note of dismay in Parvis’ voice. Oh, he could get so very used to the sweet, sweet sound of that.

Behind them, Lalnable has raised his hand to knock on the wall and let them know he’s just returned from a trip to the dam but given what’s currently going on, he has a feeling he doesn't want to know. Or involve himself.

Thus, he quietly takes three steps back and trots off to take something for his headache. And maybe have a lie down and reflect on why he kept running into the weirdest people and why they insisted on becoming friends with him. 

It’s like there’s an invisible sign posted above his clinic advertising as much that only _they_ could see and because it’s invisible, he can’t exactly take it down.

They make for the most interesting friends, though.

\--

In the clinic’s bathroom, Will starts to do up the buttons to his newly repaired waistcoat. He doesn’t mind that there’s neat rows of stitching spread out across it or on his tie (or anywhere on his outfit, really). 

The repairs are almost invisible. Parvis really hadn’t been joking about being a professional. It might not be as good as new, but it’ll do (and there’s no way he’s letting Parvis stitch him up, even if Lalnable’s been training him).

Maybe it’ll catch on and he’ll be the cause of a new fashion trend around these parts. Will Strife, consultant, businessman, freelancer, courier, Vault Hunter, fashion extraordinaire and trend setter, he should put all that on his business cards when he redoes them.

Tucking his black tie into place, he gives it one final tug and looks directly into the mirror over the sink. He likes what he sees. On the outside, he’s the same as ever but on the inside, it’s a different story. He’s less troubled by the events that’d gone down a week ago. 

Also, there’s no pain at all to be found, even if there’s stitches still threaded in his skin. He’ll have to return to get his stitches removed at some point but he’s free to leave the clinic at last.

To celebrate being pain-free and his suit’s return (from a much-needed wash and repair job by Parvis), he mimes double pistols and a wink at himself, before feeling downright silly. 

It’s unbecoming, he’s a _professional_. He should act more like one. Then decides that particular line of thinking is utter, complete bullshit and that he’s allowed to cut himself some slack every once in a while.

Like with making friends and realizing that his problems aren’t always his own to carry. It’s a welcome revelation, like a breath of fresh air after having been trapped in the same hole for so long. He feels lighter, more at ease with himself. And he’s not as friendless as he’d been a week ago.

Parvis had practically weaseled almost every bit of personal trivia out of him after the tie escapade. He has no idea if Parvis will remember all of it but he doesn’t doubt that he somehow will. Same goes in reverse.

There’s still the matter of the other Vault Hunters, but again, just like with his paperwork, he’ll deal with it in his own time-his internal monologue is interrupted by the sound of knocking. Goddamit. Well, at least he’s not talking out loud to himself again. Or at least, he thinks he’s not.

“Will, are you done yet? I have to pee, so stop talking to yourself in there!” Parvis shouts. “I’ll tell everyone you wet yourself if you don’t come out right now!” His shouting’s muffled by the door but it’s impossible for Will to pretend he hasn’t heard.

Will looks up at the ceiling, managing to stop a weary sigh from escaping. Can’t ever get a moment of peace with him around, that’s for sure. He pushes his sunglasses up onto his forehead and moves to unlock the door, opening it. 

Parvis is standing there, shifting on the spot, hands folded behind his back. He glares at Will for having taken his sweet time.

“All yours, Parvis,” Will says, mimicking Parvis’ usual cheerful tone. He is rudely shoved out of the way by a scowling Parvis, who ducks in and slams the door after him. He can hear Parvis give a loud, relieved sigh, even through the door.

Will chuckles and heads for Lalnable who is currently idling close by, clipboard in hand, clicking the pen in his left hand as he muses on whatever is currently bothering him (what doesn’t bother him, these days?).

“Will,” Lalnable coolly says as he passes by. 

“Lalnable,” Will says, mimicking his tone (he’d better stop that before it becomes a habit) and not minding that Lalnable’s on a first name basis with him as well.

“Take care,” Lalnable gruffly tells him, without taking his eyes off the clipboard. “You make for a terrible patient with all the screaming, so I’d rather not see you back here again so soon.”

It takes Will only a second to recover from the shock of hearing Lanable tell him the equivalent of ‘good luck’ or something along those lines in his own, odd way (and also proving that he’s not mad at him anymore). 

“I assure you that I don’t plan on becoming a returning or frequent customer.”

“If you’d be so kind as to pass on the same message to Lalna and his friends, that’d be greatly appreciated.” Lalnable gives a mild frown before looking back down at his inventory list. Still, he walks with Will until that they’re standing outside in the bright sun. “Try not to tear your stitches open again. You got lucky this time.”

“Certainly and I will,” Will says. “Until we meet again, Lalnable.”

“One more thing,” Lalnable notes with his characteristic dryness, “No more pranks like that on the dating site or I’ll make your life hell during your next visit when removing your stitches.”

“Cross my heart and hope to die,” Will recites, making the appropriate gestures (while keeping the fingers of one hand crossed behind his back). Also, Lalnable didn’t mention anything about other sorts of pranks, so.

Otherwise, he gives a little nod of farewell and goes off to digistruct a technical, hoping to catch up with the other Vault Hunters (either at Sanctuary Hole or at Digistruct Peak; Rythian had messaged him the Fast Travel Code for the latter earlier in the day).

Lalnable watches him climb into the digistructed technical (really, a fire-engine shade of red that matches his shirt, how tasteless) and speed off down the road. 

The door behind him swings open. Parvis appears beside him, flicking his wet hands and sending droplets of water flying in every direction. Lalnable moves his clipboard to safety by putting it into his inventory.

“He said he’d visit us again!” Parvis chirps as he waves at Will’s technical. Will raises an acknowledging hand from the driver’s seat which delights Parvis. “I’m looking forward to it, are you?” He eagerly peers at Lalnable to observe his reaction.

“No,” is Lalnable’s blunt response. But then, Parvis knows all-too well that’s likely a lie since he’s more hospitable to visitors than he initially comes off as. “ _Vault Hunters_ ,” Lalnable proceeds to derisively mutter under his breath.

“You don’t mean that!” Parvis laughs, dropping his hand to pat Lalnable’s shoulder, leaving a wet hand print on the fabric. He hopes Lalnable doesn’t notice.

“Come on, we have work to do, I need you to look after the clinic while I make a house call on the east coast,” Lalnable grumbles but readily permits the hand on his shoulder until he’s had enough (missing the print impressed on him) and shrugs off Parvis’ hand. Parvis doesn’t mind. 

The two walk back into the clinic to get ready for the day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (this was just one incredibly convoluted way of writing ‘will strife getting out of the wrong side of bed’, method #43 for driving lalnable up the wall and putting parvis in a nurse uniform.)
> 
> the first chapter of the first chaptered ‘btb’ fic is DONE! english is fun, kids. i have other ‘btb’ fics that will be set out in the same manner, which will be written in time. this particular fic was intended to be incredibly silly and developed as result of an a+ conversation with @teagstime, my fantastic editor and enabler. thank you @teagstime for editing this monstrosity.
> 
> iiiiii do not intend to set will strife up with parvis or either of them up with lalnable even though that’d be a pretty interesting threesome, heh. did i make you ship it? GOOD. SHIP AWAY. that won’t happen in this fic but don’t let that stop you from joining the growing club that is ‘how many ships can i make people ship for this au, however ridic. it ends up being or whoever said ship involves’.
> 
> now i can tick off one of my life goals: making people ship things they shouldn’t or didn’t, in the first place.
> 
> anyway, this fic also came to be as result of me playing around with character dynamics; i already wrote two scenes with will and parvis back in chapter eight of ‘tlvh’, but that didn’t really satisfy the itch to write more of the two.
> 
> and then i decided to throw lalnable in there because his dynamic with will is just a+++. and then i showed @teagstime the planning doc and in theory, how lalnable would react to parvis and vice versa. @teagstime provided some great commentary, causing the planning doc to mutate into this ~25,000 word monster of a fic.
> 
> there’s only three bandits in this au, with one former bandit, being ravs. the other two are parvis and daltos. given that ‘tlvh’ revolves around vault hunters, i also wanted to do a fic that centered on the dynamics between these three bandits and other, certain characters, given that the dynamics between them don’t necessarily get to appear in ‘tlvh’ in that much depth.
> 
> if you’ve been keeping track of word counts, each fic i’ve written so far roughly falls within the ~10,000 to ~25,000 word count. so theoretically, this could be its own chapter in ‘tlvh’ but that sort of fucks up what i have planned for chapter nine so this is my way of getting around that.
> 
> you get extra fic and i get to write. i consider that a win-win!
> 
> anyway, time for talk about the actual chapter and what the hell is going in it. due to the character restrictions on ao3, the rest of the ramble can be found over on tumblr over [here](http://borderlandscast.tumblr.com/post/138211306419/beyond-the-borderlands-how-to-influence-bandits). 
> 
> i’ll stop now. in any case, doodles by the all powerful siins are over [here](http://borderlandscast.tumblr.com/post/138211533459/wills-just-leaned-against-the-kitchen-bench-and) and [here](http://borderlandscast.tumblr.com/post/138211535629/its-been-a-while-since-i-last-drew-lalnable-i) and thanks for reading this ramble!


	2. step two: bond with your bandit over common interests

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> rule #53 of how to survive on pandora: never drive in pitch black darkness when you’re in unknown territory or else you’ll be ambushed by pirates.
> 
> rule #54 of how to survive on pandora: never drive in pitch black darkness when you’re in unknown territory or else you’ll be ambushed by pirates and you’ll get shot.
> 
> rule #55 of how to survive on pandora: if you have to get shot (for whatever reason), try to get shot near a town willing to help out three wayward vault hunters, one of whom is bleeding out and may possibly die.
> 
> alternatively, instead of dying, recover in the luxury of oasis’ only hotel! 
> 
> see the local sights and landmarks, try not to get eaten by stalkers, get to know the local townsfolk, enjoy a walk on the beach, attend the summer pierfest or work on your tan (or get sunburn)! please see the back of the brochure or contact your local travel agency for a better list of activities to see and do in oasis, one of pandora’s premier tourist destinations on the west coast!
> 
> basically, the story of how ravs came to meet and befriend nilesy, friendless hotel owner, cat lover, pool custodian and water salesman.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this story takes place years before ‘tlvh’, in a nicer time when the helios space station hadn’t quite been built yet and when oasis was actually a beachside paradise and you know, not a dried up husk of a ghost town where everyone’s dying of dehydration or heat stroke (or both) and there’s perpetual desert on all sides plus worms that spit acid everywhere.
> 
> there’s several additional warnings, on top of the ones for guns and violence. the first is for implications of a cycle of physical abuse. the second is attempted suicide due to alcohol. the last warning is for the development of ptsd. the first appears sporadically throughout the story. the second is roughly in the middle and the very last occurs closer to the end.
> 
> other than that, enjoy the story!

“Look, how would you know where to _turn_? You’ve never been here before!” Ravs’ annoyed voice cuts through the dark, an arrow that shoots straight to the point and that point is to question Rythian’s current sense of direction.

Three hours have passed since they’ve last seen another soul on the road. It’s an unfamiliar road taking them into territory they’ve never set foot in before. Ravs has never been on this side of Pandora, the west coast. It’s exciting, yes, but at some point, the thrill of it has to wear off. And it had, about an hour in. 

Boredom hadn’t taken that long to catch up from their last pit stop, a tiny town called Fyrestone set in the middle of the badlands.

On the bright side, his map is slowly taking stock of his surroundings for him. Why any ECHO device would come pre-programmed with a blank map is beyond him but he supposes it cuts costs for whoever makes the fucking things. It still sucks, though, having to play the ‘this way, no, that way’ game with Rythian. 

May whatever deity is in charge of this hellhole have mercy on anybody who gets lost. To an extent, that now includes him, Rythian and Teep. On Pandora, darkness crept along slowly, until boom, their surroundings are now cloaked in a black where one could stretch their hand out, wave it in front of their faces and not see their own fingers being waggled.

Ravs puts his hand down, wrapping his fingers around the freezing railing of the turret. The technical’s headlights don’t quite do the job in illuminating the path ahead. The pitch black darkness is that _thick_. It’s more than worrying. It’s actually unnerving, not knowing what’s in front of them until it’s too late.

They must have gone off the main road a while back. He hasn’t seen a street light (functional or not) since they made that one turn.

Rythian just snaps back, “This is the fastest way to the next town, according to the marker on my map.” He’s the only one here with night vision. Technically, there’s Teep as well, but they’ve tapped out to take a break from driving, now resting in the back.

“The ECHO device doesn’t know _shit_ ,” Ravs counters. He still believes that they took a wrong turn. How far back, though? It’s too late to tell but he’s not admitting that Rythian is onto something, because he’s not.

Teep is silent from their position in the back of the technical. They’re apparently content to remain out of whatever argument Ravs and Rythian have gotten themselves into. Or they’re asleep, long legs stretched out and taking up the majority of space, arms folded over their chest, head tipped low, still as a shadow.

In response, Rythian guns the engine and it roars, lurching forward unsteadily. The road starts to slope up as they’re heading up a hill. The smell of salt fills Ravs’ lungs once they reach the top. It’s the ocean, he realises. Pandora did have an ocean; it might not be the size of Aquator’s one but it’s nothing to sneeze at either.

It stretches all the way from the north pole of Pandora all the way from the west to east coast, wrapping snugly around the southern peninsulas and dripping into the basin of the south pole. Eventually, it trickles into rivers that trail through the land like unbroken branches spreading from the trunk of a dark, sea-green tree that formed the remaining bulk of the planet not taken up by land.

They must be close to the next town, Oasis, if they’re this close to the ocean. The name sounds fairly apt, if it’s smack bang right by it. Over the ocean, Elpis hangs high in the sky, suspended (as always) in its usual spot. The light of the moon reflects off the ocean’s rippling and moving surface, constantly churning from the wind’s languid movements.

Before he can admire the sight more, the technical starts to roll down the hill, picking up speed; Ravs can feel Rythian hitting the brakes, trying to whittle down how fast they’re descending. The road itself isn’t too well-maintained either, providing little in the way of traction to help slow them down.

Just when he thinks they’re safe, there’s a sharp bend at the end of the hill that none of them see, nothing, no barrier, no fence to stop them in their tracks and dent their ride. Ravs doesn’t blame Rythian one bit for not seeing it (okay, he does, just a little). Rythian desperately slams on the brakes that shriek, a grating sound of nails on a chalkboard.

Too late, the technical takes a leap of faith over the edge, taking them with it. Their unorthodox detour wakes Teep. Their head snaps up to take in what’s going on, hand already latching onto the back frame with a grip that betrays how surprised they are. The technical starts to lean forwards as it falls.

> what the fuck 

The message pops up in the corner of Ravs’ HUD. He chokes back a semi-hysterical laugh because he’s thinking the exact same thing, except tack on the end ‘we are so boned’ to complete it. The ground comes up to meet all four spinning wheels with a jolt and a shrill scream of the technical’s suspensions. The technical keeps going, taking them down the slope, bouncing and bumping over bits of scenery.

Wood snaps but the sound is quickly forgotten. Ravs barely registers it, far too busy hanging onto the railing in order not to be bucked out of his seat and get sent flying off into the unknown. His hands are aching already. Every bone in his knuckles are being pressed together in a way that makes the muscles clench up to the point of cramping.

It doesn’t make a difference if he closes his eyes or not. He doesn’t have a clear picture of where they’re going, the technical’s headlights cutting in and out as they continue plunging headlong into the gloom, still picking up speed the entire time.

At some point, the slope levels out into horizontal ground, their landing more of a thunderous crash (rattling his teeth in his skull) than a gentle, bumpy descent. Thank _fuck_ , Ravs had been so sure that they’d been about to go over another cliff, straight into the ocean and he doesn’t fancy a night time swim in unknown waters. 

The technical screeches to a stop when Rythian is finally able to hit the brakes again, the technical swinging sharply around. Ravs is flung sideways into the railing, knowing for sure that he’d definitely bruised his arm from the force of it. 

Rythian opens his eyes at last, his breaths coming in shallow and fast. His eyes illuminate the dark with a faint, blue glow. It’s the only light to be found around for miles. Rythian peels his sweaty palms off the steering wheel, leaning back in the driver’s seat or else he’d have slid down it.

“Ravs?” His quiet whisper makes its way up to the turret, where Ravs is pulling himself upright.

“‘m fine, nothing seriously injured,” He grunts. There’s only bruises where he hadn’t managed to stop parts of himself banging and bumping into things on the way down. His shield hadn’t helped, its charge capacity proving too low for his liking.

The technical’s headlights are busted and dented from having smashed into something (or somethings) as it’d careened out of control. Deep scratches mar the sides and front. Paint’s been scraped off their ride in multiple places. There goes the paint job that Rythian had carefully chosen. It’s the least of their worries.

Smoke starts to pour out from under the buckled hood, filling the chilly air with its familiar, acrid smell. Ravs climbs out, along with Rythian. The two land on shaky legs, hearts still thudding, the roar of blood loud in their ears from the high of adrenaline still spiking their blood.

“Teep?” Rythian whispers, rightfully sounding worried. 

Ravs barely hears his whisper, too occupied with taking in their surroundings with renewed wariness. The night is too silent for his liking, putting him on edge. The cries of the nighttime wildlife, the splash of the ocean’s waves hitting the shore or anything resembling human activity are absent, an eerie, profound silence left behind.

He still can’t see shit in front of him. The glow from Rythian’s eyes barely penetrate the dark as he casts his gaze around for Teep.

Nothing responds. They must have been thrown out. The two do spot their marker about three hundred or so metres back the way they came. Must be back up on the slope. Ravs hopes that Teep isn’t too badly hurt. They have a shield but if it’d been busted upon impact, then that spells bad news if they get into trouble now.

Looking around still doesn’t answer the question of where the three of them are. Above them, spotlights flare into life, shining on them. Rythian curses, rendered temporarily blind thanks to his use of night vision, his hands flying straight to his eyes a few seconds too late.

Ravs throws an arm up over his eyes, sparing his own vision. There’s figures marching about on wooden platforms and struts, clothed in a style that protects their faces, arms and legs from the daytime blistering sun.They’re unlike the bandits that Ravs is used to encountering. He doesn’t know until later that they’re pirates, choosing to think of them as bandits for now.

“They flipping broke our gate!” Numerous outraged shouts carry through the air to one another, shattering the silence into smithereens. 

“The fucking nerve!”

“What, are they spoiling for a fight?”

“Get them, they might have some decent loot!”

“Better be enough to fix our gate!” Ravs glances at Rythian, who is still rubbing at his eyes, trying to will his vision to return; he can’t see what’s happening but he can certainly hear, lifting his head to try to pick up on all the angry chatter above and in front of him.

Just like that, there’s gunshots peppering the air, kicking up dirt as it hits the ground by their feet. Ravs moves, darting straight at Rythian to grab him. Rythian starts at being grabbed but lets himself get yanked behind the technical.

“Ravs, what’s going on?” He asks, clearly alarmed at being shot at and also annoyed being unable to retaliate. He blinks, successfully regaining a measure of his vision, enough to see Ravs’ outline crouched next to him.

“Well, we’re being shot at, in case you couldn’t tell,” Ravs says in a pleasant tone, trying his best not to sound sarcastic. Now is not the time to triumphantly point out, ‘I told you so’.

“Ravs, I can tell we’re being shot at,” Rythian grounds out, not appreciating that one bit. “ _Why_ are they shooting at us?”

“They don’t look like normal bandits to me, so you’d think they’d be open to discussing things more civilly,” Ravs responds, peering over the top of the technical; the spotlights glaring down at him fills his vision with speckled dots. “Oh wait, they said something about us wrecking their gate earlier. That might have something to do with it.” He winces, ducking back down, trying to blink away the dots.

“That was an accident,” Rythian mutters (not one bit regretful). His brow furrows as he muses out loud, “Who the hell puts a gate on a _slope_?”

“Beats me.” Ravs shrugs, digistructing his rifle and beginning to reload it from the last time he’d emptied out half of its rounds in an attempt to ward off a bunch of cheeky skags trying to shred their technical’s tires. “Since negotiating is out of the question, we might as well do this the hard way.”

“Is it too much to ask for one day where we don’t have to shoot anything?” Rythian grumbles, also pulling out a gun and checking that it’s reloaded. It’s tricky trying to shoot back when every single time they stick their heads out, they’re still being blinded by the blasted spotlights.

A shot from afar rings out, smashing one of the spotlights and causing further alarm to spread amongst the pirates as shards of glass shower down on them. A circle of darkness spreads out from the damaged spotlight, engulfing those caught in it.

It’s an opportunity that Ravs takes, firing right into the center of it. Judging by the resulting cries of pain, he’s hit quite a few people where it really hurts. Good. Serves the fuckers right for not respecting diplomacy.

“There’s another one out there! Find them and take them out!”

“Keep your head down!”

“Set up more cover!”

So Teep’s alive. He’s glad to know that they’ve got both his and Rythian’s backs covered. “Can you see yet?” He asks Rythian. If Rythian’s vision doesn’t return, they might have to beat a hasty retreat (provided the technical isn’t that badly damaged from the earlier barrage it suffered). Nothing wrong with that, except his pride won't stand for it.

“Not yet,” Rythian says, sounding annoyed in that it’s taking him this long to recover. Downsides of having electric eyes with multiple modes of vision is the higher sensitivity to environmental conditions. “I can see outlines and shadows, though.”

“It’ll be bad if the technical gets wrecked,” Ravs absently observes. Shots from the pirates continue to ping off the technical’s sides as if they’re driving on a rough, pebble lined road (something they know all too well). If that keeps up, their technical will eventually explode, taking with it their only cover. And them too, if they don’t _move_.

“We should move, then,” Rythian responds, now mildly chagrined. “Ah, I can see now. Let’s split up, I’ll meet you around the other side of their camp.” He plants a marker at their designated meeting spot as the remaining spotlights explode one after another.

Ravs can feel Teep’s volatile rage even if he’s this far away. He’s not sticking around to find out if Teep is willing to take pot shots at him or Rythian once they run out of targets. He nods and moves out from cover, raising his gun to fire into the dark. There’s still lights set up along the wooden ramparts but they’re not as effective as the spotlights. 

Both sides are shooting blindly at where they think the other is located. Friendly fire is inevitable under these conditions. Ravs muses on how he can take advantage of that as he and Rythian approach a side gate. Ravs easily kicks it down, letting them take the first area of the ramparts by storm with the element of surprise on their side.

The pirates they ambush are easily taken out, having underestimated the two’s willingness to enter the very place housing their enemies. Clearly they don’t know how to deal with gutsy Vault Hunters. 

Ravs occasionally provides a misdirection by copying the pirates’ accent and shouting that he and Rythian had been spotted over there or on the other side, anything to gain an advantage.

Is it playing dirty? He doesn’t think he’s playing dirty. After all, it’s about fifty pirates versus just the three of them. And if the pirates aren’t clever enough to figure out that whoever is shouting isn’t actually one of them, well. Go figures.

The conflicting information confounds the pirates. All it takes is a single pull of the trigger where the clamour is loudest, right into their midst and let his kill count skyrocket. He feels that they've got the situation under control; they might as well finish whatever hunt they’ve started, while they’re at it.

Rythian occasionally teleports a pirate straight up into the air, letting Teep shoot them as they’re flung up into the sky. He doesn’t dare risk teleporting any more once he feels his teleporter heating up from overuse, resorting instead to covering Ravs.

There’s fewer pirates fighting back as time passes. The ones that leave have the right idea, Ravs figures. Why die when you can live to fight another day? The last of the pirates grow even more desperate to hold their ground, becoming reckless and venturing out of cover to take the riskiest of shots, only to be gunned down like straw men.

Ravs’ shield goes down.

It’s a shit shield (the only one he has left; his last one kicked the bucket a while back due to a fried battery past its time) and there’s no way that it’d have withstood all the bullets suddenly coming at him. His gun kicks in his hand, taking out a pirate armed with a pistol, their fear causing their arm to shake and to all appearances, misfire several times.

As the pirate goes down, there’s an impact like someone’s just bumped into him, rudely striding off into the crowd without stopping to apologize.

A second later, there’s warmth blooming just above his pelvis. From what Ravs can tell, it’s largely on the right side of his body. When he glances down, there’s three tiny holes with blood beginning to dribble down his hip, soaking the fabric of his kilt. Pain starts to take root, spreading out and into his body.

Several metres away, Rythian turns, catching sight of the wound and Ravs’ bewildered expression. He sprints over, only to meet Ravs’ hand meeting him in the ribs and shoving him back behind cover. Ravs only sees red. His whole world is saturated with the color as he charges into the fray with nothing to lose.

He can only ignore the pain for so long before his body gives in to the tendrils of pain fully sinking in. In the meantime, he’ll just do as much damage as possible and hope that when he wakes, he’s somewhere safe and well, not _dead_.

Distantly, he hopes that Rythian and Teep remember to stay out of his way. Bad enough that he’s already going down, there’s no need to take one or the both of them with him.

\--

The next time he comes to, his wounded side is fiercely throbbing. It feels like someone’s just stabbed a white-hot poker into it and had left it there to burn a hole straight through his flesh. It feels like they return every now and then to twist it just a little bit deeper. _It hurts_. Pain is nothing new to him but his mind is consumed with it; he dimly wonders where Rythian and Teep have gone.

Had they managed to get away?

What is that? A glowing circle bobs erratically above him, a miniature white sun that relentlessly beats down on him. Two blue planets, twins, identical in every way, blink in and out of sight under the white sun. A warm, bandaged hand is on him. It’s holding him down by the shoulder. 

Someone’s thumb is rubbing slow, nervous circles where his shoulder muscles merge with bone. They’re also murmuring steadily in a low voice, which fills his ears. The poker in his side twists and turns, seemingly searching. 

For what? 

Ah, that’s right. He’d been shot.

Being shot is completely different to being stabbed, he thinks. It’s funny how when he’s in pain, he can’t think of anything but _pain_. Maybe that’s just the blood loss talking, plus the shock settling in. 

Is he going to die? 

He doesn’t mind dying. 

But the thing is, he doesn’t _want_ to die. Not minding and wanting are two different things.

Faces bob in and out of his blurry vision as he straddles the border between consciousness and unconsciousness. Someone (is that Rythian? It certainly _sounds_ like Rythian) idly comments on how unusually calm he is. 

There’s a message that pops up in his HUD that he doesn’t bother reading, concentrating on trying to figure out what the fuck is going on. 

Ravs wants to laugh, he’s not calm at all, he’s terrified in that he won’t wake up the next time he closes his eyes. His body doesn’t want to obey, keeping quiet (perhaps for the better). There’s other sources of pain. That’s to be expected, but they’re not on the same level as the one that’s being excavated.

The dark green shape ringed in white by his side (definitely Teep) looks up briefly before returning to jab the poker back into him. Rocks are poking into his back, but there’s a layer of thick cloth between him and the ground. That’s appreciated. Someone had taken that into consideration. Now if only they could stop digging around in his side, that’d be even nicer.

In the second following Teep’s movement, the pain ratchets up to an unbearable notch, burning him from the inside out. For once, his body listens, suppressing its instinctive recoil and a gasp. After a moment, Teep draws back and holds out an upturned, gloved hand. 

Through the haze of pain that hasn’t left him yet, Ravs can barely make out several tiny objects glinting under the light in Teep’s bloody palm. It’s several misshapen black pellets caked with his blood. Teep discards them to one side with a flick of the wrist. 

The blue edge of their knife is spotted with flecks of red that glisten in the light; they wipe it off on a rag that they put away. The newly cleaned knife is returned to the sheath hanging off their belt.

Teep rises and draws away, out of his vision. Another dark shape leans over him as the white sun recedes into the west to hover there instead. Electric blue, blinking and worried eyes (oh, so they’re not planets; must have lost a lot more blood than he’d thought, to be hallucinating like this) blink down at him.

“Ravs, please hang in there,” Rythian pleads, his voice a hoarse whisper. If Ravs could have nodded, he would have. He really is trying to ‘hang in there’. He doesn’t want to die just as much as Rythian doesn’t want him to. Those blue eyes look up into the distance. 

If Ravs dies, the last thing he’ll have seen are those blue eyes. He doesn’t think that’s so bad.

In the east, a sun, bigger than the one next to him (that’s now practically a dwarf in comparison) appears on the horizon, growing but abruptly stops once it’s close enough. It’s accompanied by the whine of engines powering down. 

His determination to fight against the growing drowsiness falters, just for one second. One second is all it takes for it to rush forwards and envelope him in darkness. He welcomes it with reluctance, if only as a means to temporarily escape the pain. 

Fingers desperately press against his sides and the press of rough fabric trying to staunch the flow of blood there. Well, if he dies, he can rest in peace knowing that at least he’d saved Rythian and Teep. 

Ah, shit, someone’s gonna have to break the news to his mother. He tries to say something about that (her details are in his ECHO) but that’s the exact moment his recollection ends there.

\--

Nilesy watches the two Vault Hunters with mild concern. The scarfed one is restlessly pacing the length of the hotel lobby, tense hands folded behind their back, expression withdrawn.

The other Vault Hunter, the featureless one, is camped out in a chair by the window. They’re idly watching the comings and goings of the townsfolk with a patient, uncanny alertness that’s more suited to a sentry.

It’d been a stroke of luck that he’d been making a late night supply run along that particular stretch of isolated road. It’s not often he goes off the main road leading back to Oasis. A peculiar impulse (which he laters puts down to another one of fate’s contrived whims) had dragged him off in the direction of the cliffs overlooking a known pirate cove that doubled as their stronghold.

He’d arrived, only to find three, very lost and pissed off Vault Hunters stirring up chaos. The pirates had been just as pissed (because who did these assholes think they are, barging into their camp after breaking through their gate, really, just common Pandoran sense to shoot first and ask questions later). 

They thought they’d taken out one of the Vault Hunters with a lucky shot. Said Vault Hunter had simply shrugged off being shot and started a massive rampage, bleeding out of one side of their body the entire time, sustaining more wounds in the process. They hadn’t given a single shit. 

It’s kill or be killed.

If it hadn’t been for their body giving out from the pain finally slowing them down to a complete stop, the surviving pirates probably wouldn’t have lived to tell the tale. They’d promptly fled into the dark on their skiffs with shouts of revenge and all sorts of nasty things Nilesy could hear from his lofty perch. He won’t repeat them either.

Once the pirates had fled, Nilesy had watched as the two Vault Hunters tending to their fallen friend. Said friend is still miraculously alive after having collapsed onto the ground, bleeding out even more profusely from aggravating their major wound from their rampage.

If one spent enough time on Pandora, one eventually learned to tell the Vault Hunters apart from all the usual riff-raff passing through towns. It’s hard to describe. It’s more to do with a gut instinct. Nilesy wouldn’t describe himself as a people person; it’s inevitable, though to run a hotel and not become one in the process.

Line up fifty people in front of him and without batting an eyelid, he’ll pick out the ones that are Vault Hunters faster than you can say ‘lickety-split’. He’s been on Pandora that long. He can even tell apart the ones who’re just in it for the title, the bragging rights, without any intention of lifting a finger to head out there from the ones who are truly devoted to their calling. 

Not that there’s a grand prize up for the taking. 

It’s not a competition but all Vault Hunters somehow made out that there was, in the form of Vaults. Pffft, who are they kidding, the Vaults aren’t _real_ (but it made for good business and publicity, Nilesy can’t deny that). He keeps his mouth shut, however skeptical he is of the Vaults existing.

Certain people just didn’t like to have their bubble burst with the needle of reality, even if he’s doing them a free service. He’s got a solid reputation around these parts for being tight-lipped about the oddest things (like where he’s getting all that water imported from, and his obsession with cats, for starters).

Nilesy had intended to leave, he’s wasted enough time watching pirates getting wrecked. Getting involved with Vault Hunters is risky. Risky meant getting shot at, being beaten (again) or having a new slew of rumors popping up, even if Vault Hunters are a hardy lot of freelancers. Not worth it, he’d concluded. It’s also not worth adding it to the other rumors already attached to him.

He’d prepared to quietly go, turning his skiff to face in the opposite direction. While making sure his skiff hadn’t bumped into any of the rocks and become dented, he’d failed to notice the two Vault Hunters looking up. They’d spotted the headlights of his skiff. 

One of the Vault Hunters had teleported the other one up towards him. 

The featureless Vault Hunter had vaulted up over the side of his skiff, landing on his deck. By the time he’d turned his lantern on them, they’re towering over him. He’d recoiled, backing up from the wheel to cower against the railing, heart thumping frantically in his chest. 

He’s not ashamed to say that he’d thrown his arms up over his head and blurted out in a wild panic, “Please don’t hurt me, I’m not with the pirates, I’m just passing through-”

The Vault Hunter had slowly extended out gloved hands (with one coated with the blood of their wounded friend), holding them up to sign. At the time, Nilesy hadn’t thought much of it since all that’d taken up his attention had been the incoming pain. Later on, it’d dawned on him that they hadn’t wanted to startle him. Or hurt him.

Anyway, it’d been literal _years_ since he last used sign language for anything other than to talk with his mouth full (admittedly, that’s still a practical use of it). He misses half the words that the Vault Hunter signs since he’s too busy staring at their face.

The sign for ‘again’ helpfully floats up out of the depths of his mind. He shakily signs it, only just barely remembering to school his expression and brows so that it comes out as a question and not a statement. 

The Vault Hunter seems taken aback that he knows sign language, a small beat the only indicator of their surprise.

They repeat what they signed, much more slowly. This time, Nilesy watches their hands (not like there’s anything to stare at, on their face, he’d just been surprised anybody dresses like that in this weather, that’s all).

“Can we please borrow your skiff?”

“My skiff?” Nilesy doubtfully points at the skiff’s deck they’re standing on.

“We need to take my friend down there to Oasis, where there should be a doctor.”

“I live in Oasis,” Nilesy reveals, still hesitantly signing his words out. “Was on my way back when I heard...things.” Not quite a lie but he really had heard all the noise and decided to investigate. Also, he’d wanted to sign ‘commotion’ but he doesn’t know the sign for that, so he had to substitute ‘things’ in, instead. “I can take you there.”

“Thank you,” is their simple response, their posture relaxing with the promise of help.

With a hideous pang of embarrassment, Nilesy realises that they’re not deaf. He doesn’t have to sign out what he wants to say, having been far too intent on remembering how to do so. He could just _talk_. “Hold on to the railing, I’ll take us down,” He offers out loud. 

The Vault Hunter hangs onto the skiff’s railing, demonstrating that they’d heard him. Nilesy nudges the skiff over the side of the cliff, the engines stopping it from banging into the ground; Nilesy carefully steers it over, where the other Vault Hunter signals in the form of lifting an acknowledging hand.

The featureless Vault Hunter hops down. Nilesy lowers the skiff so that they can get the wounded one onboard. Once the other two Vault Hunters have climbed on, he raises the skiff and takes them in the direction of Oasis. The doctor won’t be too pleased at being woken up at this hour, but Nilesy is liked enough by them to skate by with nothing more than a minor lecture.

In the time that the doctor had left after tending to their friend, word of Vault Hunters taking up temporary residence in their town had spread to every citizen and household in Oasis. 

Business has been slow in the past two weeks, so Nilesy doesn’t see any problem in letting them hang around his hotel. At any other time, they might have scared off potential customers with the tense air hanging around them.

“I can go upstairs and check on your friend if you’d like,” He casually volunteers. 

That earns him two identical, sharp glances, snapping the two Vault Hunters out of their gloomy reverie. The two Vault Hunters glance at each other before the featureless one nods (as if giving permission) and silently turns back to the window.

“Please,” The scarfed one softly says. Nilesy doesn’t miss the gratefulness in their eyes as he slides off his seat from behind the counter and takes the stairs to the first floor. He knocks three times before entering.

The first floor with its single room is the smallest out of all the hotel floors. It’s a cosy room awash in shades of calming blue, circular in shape with a single, currently hard-at-work and rickety fan bolted to the ceiling.

The room is decked out in wicker furniture that he’d spent one weekend hauling back to the hotel from a nearby junkyard. The furniture’s spent far too long under the sun so the wicker is bleached a bone white rather than a hay yellow; it adds a nice touch to the theme of the room, he thinks. It makes the blue really pop out.

Since it’s the smallest room, there’s only one bed jammed in alongside everything else, including the pictures on the wall.

There are no less than one hundred and twenty-seven cat pictures scattered throughout his entire hotel. At least forty of them are plastered all over the walls in this room. Each picture is housed in hand-painted, elaborately carved wooden frames. No two cat pictures are exactly the same.

His collection is one of the prides and joys of his life, something he’s willing to share with the world even if he’s judged a little odd in their eyes for doing so.

Someone is sitting up in the bed upon hearing the knocking. A hand is tightly clamped to their bandaged side, a broad chest heaving, looking like they’re in pain judging by the slight grimace on their face.

Nilesy clears his throat to announce his presence. The shirtless man glances up. Upon seeing him standing there, their grimace fades, giving way to a wary, tentative smile.

“You must be the owner of this place.” The man’s voice is warm, deeper than he’d expected. “Did Rythian and Teep give you any trouble?” Now there’s an accent he hasn’t heard in _years_ as well (and Nilesy finds himself missing home in how familiar it is). 

“You mean the two currently wearing a trench in my hotel lobby floor with their pacing?” The man nods, his wariness fading upon the mention of his two friends. “They were very polite about wanting a room and paid quite a handsome amount, you see, so it’s no trouble at all,” Nilesy explains.

“That’d be them, alright.” The man gives a small chuckle but winces. After a moment, he takes his hand away from his side as if the pain’s died down. “Ravs, Vault Hunter, charmed to meet you.”

“Nilesy, Oasis hotel owner and likewise. Shame about the circumstances, though.” Nilesy gives a slight nod at the bandages thickly wrapped around Ravs’ midriff, barely visible just over the line of the blanket adorning the lower half his body. He tries not to stare at the bandage, letting his eyes remain on Ravs’ face.

“Can’t be helped, these things happen.” Ravs shrugs, appearing to suppress another wince at the pain that darts out along his damaged side as he does so.

“Is there anything I can do for you?” Ravs looks like he’s considering the offer. He nods.

“If I tipped you very nicely, would you kindly fetch Rythian and Teep? I’d get out of bed, but it looks like my kilt’s gone missing and I highly doubt you want to see what’s underneath.” Nilesy asserts a poker face like he’s a got a winning hand at a table full of loan sharks waiting for him to fold and lose everything. “If you want to, it’ll cost you,” Ravs slyly adds.

Nilesy coughs into one hand, feeling like he’s only just scratched the surface of what sort of person Ravs is. “I’ll see what I can do for you, Mister Ravs. Anything else?”

“You can just call me ‘Ravs’.” Ravs makes a face like he doesn’t like the formalities being tacked onto his name. “Hearing ‘mister’ tacked onto my name makes me feel old since I’m only twenty something, after all.”

“Sure thing, Ravs.” Grinning, Nilesy leaves the room to call the other Vault Hunters up, letting them know that Ravs is awake. He stays downstairs for a few seconds, pondering what to do.

Partially wanting to stickybeak but mostly wanting to provide good room service, Nilesy enters the kitchen. He fills and places several glasses of water on a tray.

He ransacks his kitchen cupboards, finding what he needs all the way at the back of one. A single curly straw is added to one of the glasses. That done, he hefts the tray into his hands and carefully treads upstairs. He knocks three times on the door, managing to not to spill anything through years of practice.

The featureless Vault Hunter answers, appearing to peer closely at him before deeming him harmless and letting him in. Nilesy presents them the glass with the curly straw. They take it with an acknowledging nod, drifting away to the side of the room, back turned on the rest of the room.

“Well, aren’t _you_ a sight for sore eyes…” Nilesy hears Ravs finish saying to Rythian.

“I guess if you’re well enough to flirt, you’re fine,” Rythian says, sounding mildly chagrined. Nilesy can hear the underlying relief in his voice, though. 

Rythian had been unusually quiet the entire skiff ride back, his form hunched over next to Ravs as if his body is beginning to buckle under the burden of guilt he’s shouldering. He’d barely said a word to Nilesy. 

Teep had been the one who’d negotiated and paid for the hotel room. They'd also intimidated the doctor into not overcharging them for treating a patient at such an hour.

“It’s just a flesh wound,” Ravs casually notes. “Besides, it was worth it just to hear you tell me...what was it that you said?” He taps a finger against his chin in momentary thought, eyes sparkling. “That’s right, ‘please hang in there’, with such a worried look on your face.” There’s a giant, unshakable grin on his face, quite possibly as a result of being able to tease Rythian.

“That’s not-” Rythian starts, looking affronted at such a ridiculous claim. Even though he knows very well what he’d said, he denies it anyway.

> It’s true. He really did say it.

The message pops up in the bottom of all their HUDs. Rythian glares who Nilesy assumes is Teep. Or rather, he’s glaring at the back of their head. 

Huh, so they really don’t like to talk. Wait. They could have just _messaged him in the first place_. Well, that’s in the past, so he’s not going to hold it against them. Plus, it’d been something of an emergency at the time.

“Thanks for checking up on him,” Rythian says, shooting Nilesy a grateful look upon seeing him.

“No worries,” Nilesy easily replies. He hands him a glass of water. Rythian automatically takes it. He then blinks at it like he’s not sure how to drink it without pulling his scarf down in front of everyone. Oops, he’d forgotten to add a curly straw for Rythian. Rythian shakes his head when Nilesy one-handedly mimes a straw.

“If you were worried about me dying, that didn’t happen, so stop worrying!” Ravs leans out of the bed to jostle Rythian with his elbow. Rythian almost spills the glass of water as he steps away from Ravs.

“Ravs!”

Ravs accepts the glass of water from Nilesy, slowly sipping from it. He eventually asks in a tone like he’s just making small talk, “By the way, who has my kilt?”

This time, Teep raises a hand to wordlessly point straight at Rythian from where they’re standing. For that, he shoots them a dirty look that says ‘you fucking snitch’. They put their hand down, satisfied to have helped.

“Thank you, Teep.” Ravs grandly says, giving Rythian a coy look. “It’s okay Rythian, I’m not judging you if you wanted to see me kiltless that badly.”

Rythian almost chokes on the mouthful of water he’s just taken (having briefly turned away to do so). 

“ _That’s not_ -I had to take off your kilt before the doctor arrived!” He throws Ravs a look of pure mortification. Even Nilesy can see color beginning to seep into his cheeks from a few metres away.

“Well, I don’t mind an audience if _you’re_ in the front row.”

> Stop flirting with Rythian.  
> He looks like he’s about to blow a gasket out of sheer embarrassment.

“Thanks, Teep,” Rythian gratefully begins. When he reads the second message however, he glares at them once more, mortification traded for irritation. “I am _not_ about to blow a gasket-”

“All that blood would have ruined such a nice kilt too,” Nilesy helpfully says, secretly enjoying the live entertainment immensely. It genuinely had been a really nice kilt.

“What Nilesy said as well,” Rythian says, reaching toward his belt. He digistructs Ravs’ kilt, holding it out in one hand. It’s stained with dried blood on one side, ripped and torn in places. He gingerly hands it over to Ravs. He promptly flees to Teep’s side the second Ravs takes his kilt back.

Ravs fishes his digistruct modules out of the sporran, pulling a wad of dollar bills out. He carefully counts out a certain amount, storing the rest and the modules back where they belong. He hands the money to Nilesy. 

“A _hundred_ dollars?” Nilesy exclaims once he’d counted out how much there is in total, eyes going wide under his glasses, staring at the amount in his hands. He’s never seen so much in a tip, what is Ravs _thinking_?

Startled, Rythian chokes as the mouthful of water he’s just taken goes down the wrong way. He starts coughing, causing Teep to calmly look over and start thumping him on the back.

“Is that not enough?” Ravs frowns.

“You’re too generous!” Nilesy quickly says, almost stumbling over his words. That hundred dollars? It’s three week’s worth of food and water. It’d normally take him an entire month to rack up that much in tips and only if patrons are feeling that generous to begin with. “I can’t-”

“I said I’d tip you nicely,” Ravs firmly says, putting his kilt aside. Behind him, Rythian’s stopped coughing. Satisfied, Teep turns away. “Take it, it’s all yours.”

Nilesy separates thirty dollars from the lot, throwing the rest down onto the bed. He flees the room, tray tucked under his arm and taking the stairs two at a time to go hide in his bedroom, fearing the consequences of having rejected the majority of that tip.

Baffled by his behaviour, Ravs moves to get out of the bed to go after him. Seeing this, Rythian abruptly shoves his glass into Teep’s hands. He goes to block Ravs from getting up, worried that he’ll start bleeding if he moves too soon and the lack of pants.

Ravs throws off the sheets anyway, just to fuck with him. “Ravs, _no_!” 

After fifteen minutes of nothing happening (despite hearing muffled yelling and laughter coming from upstairs), sure that nobody is coming after him, Nilesy resumes watch over his hotel at the counter. He ducks under the counter to hide when Rythian and Teep come back down to leave the hotel for whatever reason.

Thankfully, Ravs chooses to stay in his room, the lure of sleep too powerful to resist.

\--

It’s the crack of dawn when Nilesy’s woken up by a soft tapping at his bedroom door. He knows it’s the crack of dawn because that’s when he typically tries to get out of bed thanks to his ever vigilant alarm, fails miserably and sleeps in for about half an hour before his alarm decides to blare one last time. He rolls over, slamming the button on his ECHO device so that it’ll shut up.

So yes, it’s the fucking crack of dawn.

Everybody else is usually asleep at this time. Nilesy likes to use this time to prepare for the day by starting off with chores. Yes, chores, how exciting but he’s made a little game out of how fast he can clean the rooms, change all the sheets, dust and etc. He’s yet to beat his own personal standing record that has stood untouched for ninety-eight days so far.

By the time he’s done with all that, the general store will have opened up. He can trot on over to buy his usual newspaper. Plus, he can have his choice of the day’s goods before all the other vultures (known as the other Oasis residents) swoop in and pick everything dry.

However, today is not a usual day. 

When he hauls himself out of bed into a sitting position, it takes exactly ten seconds for a semblance of wakefulness to kick in. Nilesy blearily rubs his eyes, one hand fumbling about on his bedside table for his glasses. His hair starts to settle as he combs his fingers through it, not wanting to walk around with bed hair.

Because he has excellent hand-eye coordination, he almost knocks them off the table with his searching fingers. That sends them skittering close to the edge, earning a spike in adrenaline (they’re his favourite and only pair of glasses). Fortunately, he catches them in time, sliding them on. Hooray for his first victory of the day. 

What a great way to start the morning, his inner voice grouses before he shushes it. None of that negativity now. The day is forecasted to be sunny with a light summer breeze and a maximum temperature capable of cooking raw meat on the sidewalk. Nothing out of the ordinary.

By the time he all but staggers over to his bedroom door, he belatedly remembers that he has Vault Hunters staying with him.

One of them is patiently standing there, having waited for him to answer the door. It’s Teep. Nilesy fails to hide his surprise. He’d missed the opportunity to slide his poker face on, in the time between opening the door and registering that Teep is here to see him.

“Er, good morning…?” He says, letting go of the door to sign it out as well. What do they want from him?

“Morning,” Teep carelessly signs with one hand, straightening up from a slouch. Their other hand is stowed deep in a pocket of their jacket. They point to Nilesy’s hands. 

Nilesy glances down at his own hands. He has to crane his head back up to their face (why are they so fucking _tall_ ). Or where he assumes their face is, what with the goggles and all.

“You want my hands?” He doesn’t bother to hide his bafflement; it’s too early to play the poker face game. 

Teep nods. Nilesy extends out one of his hands, tentatively. It could be a prank. He doesn’t mind those. Unless there’s pain involved. In which case, for the love of all that is holy and sacred, _no_. 

Not in any hurry, Teep takes his hand with a surprising tenderness, turning it so that his palm is facing up. They extract the hand that’d been hidden inside their jacket to leave something on Nilesy’s hand. He feels paper rustling against his palm. It tickles like feathers brushing against his skin. 

The likelihood of this being some sort of nasty prank diminishes. It still doesn’t eliminate the possibility, though. Next, they take and place Nilesy’s other palm on top so that both of his hands sandwich whatever they’ve just gifted him. 

What happens next occurs almost too quickly for him to process: Teep sprints off back up the stairs, leaving one confused Nilesy behind.

He moves to see what they’ve gifted him, parting his hands (inwardly cringing, expecting the worse) and staring. It’s a crumpled up wad of bills adding up to exactly seventy dollars. God fucking dammit, _Ravs_. Sending another Vault Hunter to do his dirty work, now that’s just underhanded.

He stares up at the ceiling for a few seconds, wondering how best to return them without making a scene, upsetting anyone, causing any awkwardness or getting the shit beaten out of him for his cheek. 

His answer comes to him in about five seconds. Nilesy stashes the money in the pockets of his pants as he heads straight for the kitchen.

Chores can wait. First, he’s got to give his guests a complimentary breakfast in bed. Everyone likes pancakes, right? If not, they’re banned for life from his hotel. No exceptions. The best part is that his pancakes are made from scratch. Ah, he should have asked first if any of them had allergies. 

Oh well. 

He’ll just make a note about it and leave said note on the tray. At least one of them can read, right? He misspells ‘milk’ as ‘malk’ (in his defense, it’s still early in the day). He automatically scratches it out, eventually deciding to rewrite said note and waste another piece of paper. 

At the last moment, he remembers to scrawl a standard disclaimer about not taking any responsibility and all that jazz. Nilesy likes the Vault Hunters, trusts them but people could choose to (and in the past, had actually _tried_ to) sue and/or attack him for the stupidest things. Just a bit of insurance.

That said, he’s going to an awful lot of effort to return that money . He’s got his mind made up: he is going to return that money, even if he has to play dirty too. Actually, he’s secretly finding this fun, even if the game is going to end fairly soon.

Nilesy folds the dollar bills in half, using a rubber band to hold them flat before lifting up one of the plates and tucking them underneath. He adjusts the plate so that only a tiny edge is lifted up. It’ll do for Ravs to suspect something’s tucked under there and investigate. By then, he has absolutely no choice but to accept the refund.

It’s a foolproof plan! There’s no way that it could possibly _fail_. Nope, no way at all. 

Nilesy’s actually a little proud in how creative he’s being with all this. He diabolically rubs his hands together, lets himself have a little evil laugh accompanied by a matching smirk. He makes one final check that he hasn’t forgotten anything; he hasn’t, so he lifts up the tray and heads upstairs, remembering to appear calm.

He knocks on the door, feeling the tiniest bit excited that he’s about to pull it off. A sleepy-looking Rythian answers the door this time, his hair and clothes disheveled. He must have just woken up. Behind him, still in bed, a wide awake Ravs is playing poker with Teep, cards spread out all over the sheets.

“Teep, you have a really good poker face,” Ravs lightly observes, concentrating on his hand. “Have you thought of, you know, _not wearing it_?” He proposes, sounding annoyed.

“No can do,” Teep signs. “You going to fold or what?” They impatiently add. 

“Bah, I fold, I’ve had enough of this fucking game,” Ravs says, tossing down his hand and leaning back in bed, throwing an accusing look at them. “Besides, I’m positive you’re cheating anyway.”

“Or maybe you’re just terrible at poker,” Teep retorts, gathering up all the cards into one tidy deck.

“Breakfast,” Rythian announces before yawning under his scarf. “Nilesy says it’s complimentary.” He takes the tray once Nilesy hands it over, Nilesy taking his leave with a little bow. “Thank you.”

Nilesy is unable to stop a wide grin appearing on his face as he heads back down the stairs. It’s still ten minutes too early to be hitting up the general store but he’d rather not be around once Ravs discovers the money hidden under his plate of pancakes.

\--

The townsfolk do reluctantly welcome the Vault Hunters, albeit keep them at an arm’s length when it came to interactions past that of the ‘give mission, have them report in when finished and pay them’ type.

Rythian and Teep don’t really appear to give a shit about how they’re being treated, more than happy to accept and run jobs. The two are content to spend the rest of their spare time in Nilesy’s hotel or going out and about town or taking trips out to the surrounding areas. They continue paying him on a daily basis (that is, every day) for putting up with them.

Not that he minds. The Vault Hunters are the best patrons he’s ever had. They’re more discreet than he’d expected, proving careful not to make a mess or too much noise whenever they’ve returned and are resting up. They’re also incredibly polite when they talk to him. 

Nilesy gets the sense that they’re being extra careful around him. It occurs to him that it’s likely at Ravs’ request. 

Ravs hasn’t yet descended from the first floor. Nilesy hands off meals to either Rythian or Teep, who bring it upstairs to him. 

Is he avoiding Ravs? No, of course not. He’s just very busy, that’s all. Got to keep his hotel running smoothly. Plus making sure that his relations with his fellow townsfolk haven’t deteriorated (ha, like it could, any further) given that he’s housing guests of an odd variety and nature.

That said, he can’t help but wonder about the sleeping arrangements, as he’s doing laundry. It goes into his salvaged but mostly functional washing machine that makes too much noise as it’s going through the programmed spin cycles.

The bed in Ravs’ room is barely big enough for two people. To the best of his knowledge, the other two aren’t borrowing any of the other rooms in his hotel.

He keeps all the keys on him so there’s no way they could break into any of the other rooms to borrow any of the other beds. He’d know instantly if that happened. One, he’s a light sleeper and two, all the locks are notoriously difficult to break or pick, after that one incident with the drunken couple he shall not speak of in civilized company.

Somebody could be sneaking out to sleep on a roof or something, but as per Oasis weather customs, the nights could be horrendously freezing when it’s not sweltering to the point of making sleep impossible, if not, uncomfortable.

There’s no in between when it comes to the outside world. Nilesy tries to lean towards one or the other in his hotel since it’s nigh impossible to maintain a balance that works for everybody. So far, none of the three have actually complained about how much more cooler it is in his hotel compared to the outside. And no news is good news, right?

Laundry done, Nilesy has the last task to accomplish on his to-do list for the day: check on Ravs’ room. While Ravs is present. He maintains that he’s not trying to avoid Ravs, so why he has he been procrastinating on that front?

He climbs the stairs bearing an armful of fresh sheets. Wood softly creaks under his feet, trepidation also rising with every step. He knocks, hearing Ravs call out to let him know that it’s fine for him to come in. He turns the knob, entering. On auto-pilot, Nilesy can’t help but push a smile onto his face once he sees him.

Ravs is relaxing in one of the window seats, leaning against a pile of cushions, a blanket draped over his legs and lower body. In one of the wicker chairs close by is Rythian, an open book laid out in his lap. He does not look up upon noticing him, continuing to read, eyes steadily following the lines of text.

“Nilesy, good morning,” Ravs evenly says, giving a small wave in greeting. He shows no signs of looking livid at Nilesy returning the money in such a fashion.

“Ravs, good morning to you too,” Nilesy returns, pleasantly surprised that they’d already vacated the bed for him. “You too, Rythian,” He says after a pause to try to see what Rythian’s reading. It’s nothing he recognizes and there’s no pictures that he can make out on the pages he’s on. Boring.

He avoids knocking over anything as he navigates to the bed, the one time his skinny frame comes in useful. There’s maroon streaks on one side of the bed, likely from when Ravs had bled out onto it at some point. 

“Sorry about that,” Ravs says, throwing an apologetic look his way when he pauses to briefly glance at the stains.

“It’s fine, I know how to get blood out of the sheets,” Nilesy dismissively says, honestly not minding. 

What sort of Pandoran would he be if he didn’t know how to get blood out of or off things? He’s had blood on him at varying times in his life. Never anybody else’s, however, only his own. Is that extremely lucky or unfortunate?

That said, he’s terrified of dying. He’s been hurt before (bound to happen sooner or later during one’s stay on this planet) but never to the point of a near-death experience. 

Seeing a Vault Hunter joke and still be themselves despite being in a massive amount of pain and brushing it off like it’s nothing is...the best he can describe it as is ‘humbling’. And a little unnerving with how matter-of-fact their attitude is, towards dying.

He frisks the bed of the pillows and sheets, tucking in the replacement sheets before patting the bed down and returning the newly fluffed up pillows to their rightful place. Gathering the dirty sheets into his arms, he nods as he leaves. 

Rythian’s boot gently bumps against the wicker chair as he shifts in his seat, the fingers of one hand twitching. He glances briefly at Ravs, nodding to indicate a successful transfer, his eyes twinkling with amusement. Ravs just smiles and puts a finger to his lips.

It’s not until Nilesy goes back downstairs that he feels something sticking out of the back pocket of his shorts. Reaching around, he pats his pockets to feel what’s in there. He never uses the back pockets of his shorts to store anything longer than a few seconds. The tips of his fingers bump against familiar, papery and textured edges. He drops the sheets in the middle of the hallway to have a look.

Yanking out whatever it is, it dawns on him that it’s the seventy dollars he tried to return. Somehow, either Ravs or Rythian had snuck the money into his pocket without him catching on the entire time he’d been the room. And Nilesy fancies himself as being pretty aware of his surroundings. 

Sneaky bastards. He vanishes the money into his inventory, his resolve at returning the money increasing tenfold. Oh, it’s _on_. If he has to be even sneakier, then so be it.

\--

Nilesy lies wide awake in bed, his sheets pulled up around him so that he looks like one of those newborn cats wrapped up in a blanket for their own good.

“Meow,” He softly intones, suppressing a childish giggle that bubbles up a second after. 

It’s a few minutes after the crack of dawn. Now, not to panic or anything, but there are strange sounds coming from the direction of his kitchen. There’s someone or _someones_ in there. His bedroom is a metre away from the kitchen so any loud sounds echo down the hall and under his door.

Not wanting to alert them to his presence, he tiptoes over to the door in his bare feet after snatching up his glasses and putting them on. At any other time, there’s the risk of splinters from the wooden floor but he’s willing to take that risk now. Had someone broken into his hotel? He’s got tough locks on all the entrances and exits leading into his hotel but clearly they’d fallen.

The hinges on his bedroom door are well-oiled so he manages to slip out in the silent hallway, along the carpeted floor fraying in places. It tickles the soles of his feet. He bites the inside of his cheek, letting the twinge of pain stop him from making any sound (fuck being ticklish) as he creeps along to the kitchen doorway. 

Once he’s there, he leans out, just enough to see what’s going on, only to spot Rythian and Teep having a whispered, one-sided and heated argument by his stove.

“Look, we can’t use his kitchen without permission!” Rythian whispers, directing it towards Teep.

Teep crudely signs back at him, “We’ll clean up after. He won’t even know we used it.”

“Yes he will! It’s his hotel…” Rythian trails off, his insistence against using the kitchen faltering at whatever logic Teep is pushing on him. 

“We’ll pay him. And replace whatever we used. It’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission, right?”

“You can’t just-” Rythian grounds out, his voice catching, growing a fraction louder. He remembers to lower the volume of his voice a second later. “It’s not like we’re going to die of hunger on the spot! You can wait until Ravs wakes up.”

“Sure, but I am going to be really, really grumpy until then and you don’t want that.” Teep folds their arms across their chest and levels a certain look at Rythian that Nilesy can’t interpret.

“It’s not going to kill you to be patient!”

Nilesy clears his throat from the kitchen doorway. The two Vault Hunters’ heads snap up, hands moving to the digistruct modules hanging off their belts. His heart hammers away at their reactions. The two lower their hands when they see it’s only him. Teep stands up straight, looking right at Nilesy, unwilling to concede any fault.

“Is there something wrong?” Nilesy blinks at them, his lips twitching with the beginnings of a smile. Two people who could have killed him on the spot without feeling any remorse are _arguing_ with one another about whether or not it’s okay to use his kitchen; how else is he supposed to react?

“Nothing,” Rythian lies, looking sheepish. Wow, he’s a terrible liar, shifting on the spot and looking like he wants out.

“You know, you don’t really have to ask permission to use my kitchen,” Nilesy pauses, only to watch Teep elbow Rythian in the side as if to say, ‘told you so’. Rythian shoots a half-hearted glare at them. “All I ask is that you don’t make a giant mess and replace whatever you use. Or set anything on fire.”

“Thank you,” Rythian says. It comes out rather abrupt, relief underlying it as his posture slackening as all the tension he’d been holding up until now drains out of his form in that instance of ‘thank you’.

“So there is where you two disappeared to.” Ravs’ amused voice drifts over to them from the doorway. The three of them look over to see him leaning heavily against the frame of the doorway, looking like he’s just rolled out of bed (tousled hair, eyes still heavy with lingering sleep and an easy listlessness to the way he moves).

“We might as well have breakfast together before the day starts?” Nilesy proposes, injecting some cheerful enthusiasm into his voice at how the situation had turned out.

He’d thought he’d find burglars, not at all happy about that prospect. Instead, it’d just been two hungry Vault Hunters who’d only been worried about disturbing him. His hotel, his rules. There’s no other suitable place in town that’ll put up with them so easily. It makes sense that they’d fret about offending him.

“Good idea.” Ravs roughly pushes off the doorway, making his way over to the kitchen counter, one hand held against his bandaged side.

Rythian moves towards him, a hand stretching out to help him over to a chair. “It’s fine, you just sit down before you-”

Ravs easily shrugs off his offer of help with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Teep can’t cook, you can’t cook and I’d hate to infringe on Nilesy’s hospitality further, even if he makes great pancakes,” He stubbornly says, cutting Rythian off. At that, Rythian frowns, looking like he’s about to argue when Teep intervenes. Nilesy tries not to preen himself at that compliment.

“If Ravs feels like cooking, then let him cook.”

“I do,” Ravs agrees. “As nice as it is to have breakfast in bed, I’m tired of being stuck in my room.” When Rythian continues to look worried, he adds, “Plus, Nilesy can help me. Why don’t you two go and see if there’s any new missions on the bounty board in town?” Teep shrugs and is already walking out, soon followed by Rythian.

Nilesy senses that Ravs wants to talk to him. One on one. “Ravs-” Ravs steps towards the stove, a frying pan in hand. He twiddles a knob, the stove lighting up as he puts the frying pan on one of the hot plates. 

“You got any eggs and oil?” He smoothly interrupts.

“Oil’s in that cupboard and eggs are in the fridge. Hold on, I’ll grab them.” Nilesy grabs the entire carton, not knowing how many he wants, leaving it open on the counter next to him. “Are you sure you should be up and about?” He points to the healing wound. 

Well, if Ravs isn’t here to talk about that, then who is he to press the issue?

Ravs barely glances at where he’s pointing, taking an egg and cracking it on the side of the stove using only one hand. The egg spills out into the pan. 

It mingles with the oil, crackling away as it start to cook, the whites steadily transforming from a translucent, unappealing goop into a creamy, hole-ridden landscape, a single, lopsided island of yellow-orange in the middle. Another egg is cracked open, added and left to cook.

“I’m fine. It didn’t hurt when I accidentally rolled over into it last night,” Ravs finally responds. Nilesy takes the eggshells from him, carefully tossing them into the trash and washing his hands after. The smell of fried eggs starts to permeate the air, causing his stomach to take a sudden interest in the situation. “You don’t have to worry,” He adds, firmly. “It’ll take a lot more than that to kill me.”

There’s that cavalier attitude towards death again. Nilesy will take his word that he won’t die so easily. If only he could muster up the same attitude for his own situations, his life would be a lot easier...

“So, do Rythian and Teep really don’t know how to cook?” He’d been curious, ever since Ravs had mentioned that a while ago.

“Well, it’s more that when Rythian tries to cook, half the time, it turns out inedible,” Ravs stops to quietly chuckle that particular memory (oh, how embarrassed he’d been) before continuing, “Teep’s far too used to rations and frankly, one bad cook is enough. Don’t want to find out that we have _two_ bad cooks on the dream team.” He follows that up with a small, fond smile.

“That would explain why they’re so skinny.”

“You too,” Ravs points out. Nilesy looks down at himself like he has no clue about what he’s talking about. “Got any skag meat in that fridge of yours?”

“Let me check.” Nilesy crouches to examine the contents of his fridge. He remembers buying them a couple of days ago, on the off chance that a cat comes around. Cats like meat and skag meat is meat. Since he has a feeling that today isn’t a lucky day for meeting cats, he grabs the unopened pack and closes his fridge, tearing the plastic open. “You want to add it to the eggs?”

Ravs plucks two pieces out. “You, Rythian and Teep need some more meat on your bones, if you get my drift. A breeze could knock you three over!” The skag meat sizzles loudly as it’s added to the pan alongside the eggs. “Also, Teep really likes the stuff.”

“Excuse me, it’d take a hurricane to blow me over!” Nilesy huffily corrects. Ravs laughs. Nilesy proceeds to inquire as he starts pulling plates and forks out of one of the cupboards, “How long have you three been traveling together?”

“Several months now. East coast to west coast, by technical.” Ravs tilts the pan so that the cooked eggs and bacon slide out onto the plate, pausing to readd some oil to the pan before frying up another batch. “You want to tag along?” He offers, tilting his head to look at Nilesy seriously.

“Thank you but no,” Nilesy easily replies, refusing to dwell on that offer any longer than he has to. The eggs continue to crackle, a brief and easy silence springing up in the wake of that question. He’s surprised it’s not awkward silence, actually.

“Alright.” Ravs returns to supervising the eggs so that they don’t burn. He adds several things that Nilesy misses, because Teep and Rythian return at that exact moment.

“Somebody’s got a stalker problem just out of town. We’ll eat, then deal with it,” Rythian reports, sounding less than enthused about it. Teep looks like they couldn’t give less of a fuck, so long as they have something to shoot at. Since Nilesy isn’t Teep, he doesn’t know if that’s what’s going through their head. He just assumes, for the fun of it. “Something smells good.”

Nilesy hands a plate to Rythian. Rythian takes it, then sits down at the table, picking up one of the forks that’s already laid out. He reaches up for his scarf like he’s about to pull it down and eat. He stops. A cautious glance is thrown over in Nilesy’s direction.

“I’ll get the newspaper,” Nilesy volunteers (more like declares), taking the hint. Teep takes one of the plates and a fork, heading upstairs with both to eat in privacy.

“Don’t take too long or else these two will eat everything,” Ravs jokes. “You’re a growing boy who needs all the food you can get.”

“ _Please_ , I’m the same age as you are,” Nilesy retorts, dodging Teep in the hallway and exiting via the front door.

\--

When Nilesy checks on Ravs, he’s gone. It would have given him a heart attack, if he hadn’t know that Ravs had a habit of waking up earlier by about fifteen minutes prior to the crack of dawn. It’s not that Nilesy’s worried about his condition but rather, he’d grown to enjoy his company. The same could be said for Rythian and Teep.

Teep might not talk much (heh, an understatement, considering they proved rather chatty whenever they felt up to talking, whether through sign language or messaging). They’re good company, if a little intimidating. 

They spend a lot of their spare time out of Oasis, probably running jobs or simply exploring, usually returning once the sun is setting. Nilesy is content not to push interaction. He knows how valuable time spent in one’s own thoughts could be, especially for the strong and silent type.

Rythian is a mixture of Ravs and Teep’s inclination to interact. He keeps his distance and yet, at the same time, doesn’t. It reminds Nilesy of all the cats he’s seen on the ECHOnet who are initially skittish towards their new owners. Once they warmed up though, said cats appeared reluctant to leave their new owner’s side. 

Nilesy can tell that he’s very attached to the other two Vault Hunters.

While Ravs keeps the behind the scenes part running smoothly, Rythian’s apparently the one who calls the shots. Teep usually doesn’t go on a job unless he knows of it first. Rather, once Rythian knows where and what they’re intending, he’s usually happy to let them go. Usually, he’s accompanying them.

Ravs is the chattiest of them all. Given that he’s injured, he’s the one Nilesy sees the most of. Wait, no, that sounded wrong. Scratch that. He's the one Nilesy talks to the most.

Well, he’s not in his room and Nilesy hasn’t heard him moving around in the hotel, he figures that Ravs has gone out for his usual walk.

He heads outside to pick up his usual newspaper and do a supply run at the general store. It’s only five minutes (if he walks very slowly) away. The bell above the door rings; he’s not paying any attention at all, making a beeline for the rack holding all the magazines and the stack of newspapers by it. 

It’s why he doesn’t spot Ravs at the counter until he’s standing by him.

“Morning, Nilesy,” Ravs greets. The storekeeper boggles at him saying ‘morning’ to Nilesy, staring between the two. The townsfolk have known of Ravs but they’d never seen him set foot outside of the hotel until now. He takes his walks when there's very little people around to boggle at him.

“Morning to you too, Ravs,” Nilesy says, blinking and suppressing his surprise under the guise of nonchalance like it’s perfectly normal to run into him at the general store. Nothing wrong with interacting with his guests, nope. He reaches out to take the topmost newspaper but Ravs leans over to hand him one he’d already taken.

“I was picking this up for you so you don’t need to buy one,” He says. Nilesy reluctantly takes it.

“Thank you,” He says, mildly taken aback by this kind gesture. “You didn’t have to.”

“It seemed like common sense? I also wanted to pick up some other things while I’m here.” Ravs shrugs. Nilesy stashes the newspaper into his inventory. “Coffee, eggs, sugar and more skag meat to replace whatever the hotel’s running low on.”

“You’re too kind,” Nilesy notes. “Really, it’s fine-” He does the grocery runs every couple of days so for Ravs to take that into account doesn’t sit well with him. Is this his way of repaying the seventy dollars? Speaking of which, he hasn’t returned that yet, still figuring out a plan of action.

“I insist,” Ravs says, firmly and that’s the end of that, as he turns to pay the shopkeeper. 

Wanting to help, Nilesy grabs a bag off the counter. “I’ll take one of these, at least.” 

It’s the least he can do by helping carrying some of it back-the bag is _heavy_ like a sack of potatoes. Its weight causes him to stumble forwards as gravity latches onto it and drags it down onto the floor with a ‘thwump’, taking him with it. 

Ravs peers down at him. “You okay there?”

“Just _grand_ , thanks,” Nilesy says sarcastically. In complete contrast, Ravs leans down and hefts the bag up in one fluid motion like it’s made out of feathers and not filled to the brim with heavy groceries.

“You can carry the eggs,” Ravs says but there’s something in his tone like he’s trying not to laugh at how easily Nilesy had toppled over.

Nilesy huffs and snatches the carton of eggs off the counter. He hadn’t know the bag would be that _heavy_ , okay. “Later,” He says to the storekeeper.

The storekeeper is still boggling at Ravs with the air of someone who’d like to get to him better (in several different ways). And of course the entire town will know of his amazing existence within a few hours.

\--

“Does everyone you talk to develop a crush on you?” Ravs throws Nilesy an amused look for that question. Nilesy coughs into one hand, adding hastily in the way of a clarification, “It’s just that when I walk around town with you, everyone who stops to have a chat to you looks like they’re completely besotted.”

“Are you jealous?” Ravs asks, looking even more amused. 

They’re currently walking a walk on the pier that juts out along the front of Oasis. It extends a little way out into the ocean, the sandy beach stretched out to the left and right on either side of them. 

This is where Ravs likes to go for his walks. On this one morning, Nilesy had decided to accompany him when he’d run into him in the hallway and well, Ravs had asked and he has nothing but time on his hands, so. It’s also good to stretch his legs out, get a little bit of extra exercise in for the day.

The early morning air is still chilly from the overnight drop in temperature, lending goosebumps to Nilesy’s skin when combined with the wind coming in over the ocean. It’s rather nice, actually. There’s also nobody else but them out, at this hour. Just the two of them, with nobody to judge or start gossiping if they’re seen out together.

“No, no, no, I just want to know something.” Nilesy leans in, dropping his voice to a whisper, “What’s your secret? Do you cast a magic spell? Hypnotize them?”

Ravs laughs. Nilesy’s noticed that he laughs a lot. It’s part of what makes him so _likeable_. Small wonder why almost the entire town has become infatuated with him. 

“There is no secret. I’m just that naturally charming.” The worst part is, Nilesy is certain that Ravs is being 100% sincere.

“Now _you_ have to answer a question.”

“Wait, hold on a second, I didn’t realize we were playing twenty questions!”

“I’m not asking you anything embarrassing,” Ravs immediately reassures him.

“...What is it?”

“Why do you like cats so much?” They pause to watch a stalker in the distance fish with its tri-pronged tail, lifting its shiny catch into its mouth to swallow it. It continues to chase after shadows in the water with its deadly tail. “I’ve seen the pictures posted in my room and all over the hotel.”

Nilesy ponders the benefits of telling Ravs. Well, Ravs had answered his question when he’d asked and hadn’t lied at all. He also didn’t seem like the sort to make fun of someone for their honesty. “Wasn’t allowed one as a kid. Now that I’m an adult, I can do whatever I want! And I want a cat.”

“Fair enough.” Ravs nods, easily accepting his answer. The stalker starts to tussle with another stalker attempting to steal its meal, claws, teeth and tails flashing in the sun.

“Wait, you’re accepting my answer, just like that?”

“Yep.”

“I thought you’d want to know if I was lying or not!”

“You don’t strike me as the type to lie about what you really want.”

“True, but-”

“You like cats and want a cat. Pretty simple! Nothing more to it.” The ambitious stalker indicates submission to the other one, drawing away to slink off and seek its meal elsewhere. Ravs and Nilesy watch the other stalker returning to fish by the water. “It’s your turn to ask, by the way.”

“I got one. Do you like everyone, or…?”

“Ah, is this one of those questions where you try to figure out which way I swing? I didn’t think you’d be interested, Nilesy.” Ravs gives him an amused look, a grin slowly spreading on his face.

“I’m not!” Nilesy gives him an annoyed look over the top of his glasses. Ravs continues to look amused. “Well, if you really must know, the storekeeper keeps hinting that they’d really like to get to know you better and it’s driving me _nuts_. I can't leave the store with my newspaper without being interrogated.”

“Hm...in that case, for future reference, the sky’s the limit in regards to which way I swing.”

“Huh. You know, that doesn’t surprise me at all.” Nilesy picks up a pebble on the pier to lob it into the water. He and Ravs watch the ripples with mild interest.

“Are they bothering you too much about it? I can step in and-”

“No, no, I got this. I can fight my own battles.” If only that wasn’t a lie.

“Well, if it gets out of hand, just say the word.”

“Now answer me this…” Ravs steps closer to Nilesy, leaning down to ask in a hushed tone (and Nilesy manages to not jump out of his skin at how close he’s leaning in), “What’s with the pool out back? You’ve got a perfectly good beach next door.”

Nilesy looks left, then right (yes, the coast is clear) before whispers, “It’s my secret weapon during the summer and the droughts.” He doesn’t elaborate, drawing back. Ravs chooses to take it at face value, straightening up.

“You know what other secret weapon you could use? A bar. There’s no watering hole in his town. With all these people around, it’s a wonder how you’ve managed to keep your hotel afloat.” He sees the neutral look that’d just appeared on Nilesy’s face and tactfully adds, “Just a minor suggestion.”

“People do like alcohol an awful lot,” Nilesy concedes. The stalker finally sees them and roars, its tail lashing in agitation but doesn’t dare launch itself at them. There’s a good stretch of ocean separating it and them. It turns and vanishes up the dune behind it instead. Its tail is the last thing Nilesy sees of it.

“I could bartend for you while I’m healing up. It’s not too intensive and it’ll be good practice for when I actually set up my own bar.”

“I don’t see any harm in it.” If Nilesy had attended the town meetings, he would have known that the town had been clamoring for a bar, except none were willing to volunteer for the role.

“We can set up things once we get back and put out the word.”

Something occurs to Nilesy. He coughs, just once, as they start to walk back along the pier towards Oasis. “I don’t mean to rain on your parade but where are you going to get all the booze from?”

“Oh, don’t worry about that,” Ravs says, airily. Nilesy wants to ask but has a feeling he doesn’t want to know, not matter how much his curiosity is _dying_ to be satisfied.

\--

Meanwhile, Teep and Rythian have taken a skiff out and are headed towards Wurmwater. Rythian’s driving; it’s not that Teep is a terrible driver but they did have a tendency to go for the worst jumps, giving him a nasty, adrenaline inducing scare to outdo Ravs’ ones. Ravs enjoys those immensely while Rythian loathes them.

In particular, he hates how he becomes weightless for a second before the incoming, sharp drop where his stomach smashes back into existence, leaving him dizzy and lightheaded, fuck the thrill and adrenaline rush that thrill his teammates.

Also, Teep liked to run over unsuspecting wildlife. Rythian would have accused them of animal cruelty if he’d been more sympathetic. Nope, the most he feels is a small sense of petty satisfaction because so far, the wildlife has caused nothing but trouble for him. All of them. 

If there ever comes a day when he has to work with them, well. He’ll just have to make sure he’s drunk enough first. Or can run far, _far_ away.

The skiff carves a white, foamy path across the top of the ocean waves, sending up a salty spray that Teep edges away from, where they’re leaning against the railing of the deck. The breeze is nice, offsetting how eventual the temperature is climbing up into the thirties. By midday, it’ll have hit forty degrees Celsius, maybe even creeping into the fifties.

By then, Rythian hopes that they’ll be long gone from these waters and back in the relative safety and coolness of Nilesy’s hotel. They have a mission to do for the mayor of Oasis. That mission is to steal back the water the pirates took, featuring one special request from Ravs.

It’s steal the pirates’ booze stock. If he’s planning on getting very drunk to pass the time during his recovery, Rythian’s going to have to schedule an intervention. Ravs didn’t even say what the booze is for when giving them the mission.

Well, Rythian trusts him to explain once they get back with it (there are no ‘if they return’, because he knows that they _will_ return). The pirates’ base is tucked into a small cove. It’s the same one Ravs had been shot in and frankly, for the pirates to return and make camp again there is something that Rythian considers both admirable and foolhardy.

A message accompanied by a waypoint from Teep directs him on where they should go.

> Drop us off around the back.  
> Also, don’t steer us so close.

He steers the skiff up onto a beach and out of sight of the sentries, trusting Teep’s brief reconnaissance of the coast leading into the cove. Teep stores their sniper rifle so that it lies flat against their back, vaulting easily over the railing of the skiff once the skiff comes to a stop. Rythian locks the skiff into place, climbing down the side and dropping on both feet and straightening up.

> We’ve got some good sniping positions if we go around and up to the cliffs overlooking the cove.

“Sounds like a plan,” Rythian murmurs. He finds no fault in that, trusting Teep. They’ve only known each other for a few months and he already trusts them, plus any advice they give. 

Funny how being stuck together on a planet like this brings the most unexpected of people together. He already has a former bandit who is also a massive flirt for a companion. Why not add a mute assassin to his team, just to shake it up a bit?

Ravs still might take issue with some of Teep’s strategies, preferring the direct and up close approach while they’re the exact opposite; when they’re not trolling each other, the two make a surprisingly good team.

That is, when the two are not driving Rythian up the wall with their constant bickering, attempts to one-up one another and causing collateral damage. He can’t deny that the success of their missions have shot up with the addition of Teep, though.

He turns to check if they need to hide their ride. At a glance, the steel-colored skiff is well hidden, a copse of palm trees and thick vegetation hiding it. He trusts it won’t disappear while they’re gone; he’d taken enormous care to approach from the pirates’ blind side. It’d been fortunate that the cove hadn’t overlooked the direction in which they’re coming from.

Climbing the cliff isn’t that difficult. It’s not that steep and there’s plenty of plant growth along them to grab onto to haul themselves up. It takes about fifteen minutes. Still, by the time Rythian’s standing on top of the cliff, he’s panting, sweat sticking to where his clothes meet his skin and his forehead.

In an attempt to get rid of the worst of it, he sheds his coat, pulling his scarf up and over his head to serve as makeshift shelter from the sun. His coat is stuffed into his inventory. He expects to have become a shade darker by the end of this, his brown skin getting yet another unavoidable _tan_.

The wind that blows up from the sea feels quite nice on his bare arms and face, though. It’s been a long time since he’s taken off his scarf that he takes a few moments to enjoy it.

> Feeling the heat, are we?

Rythian doesn’t bother responding, crouching down behind a rock. He picks his best sniper rifle, lifting it into his hands. Beside him, Teep has slipped behind cover as well, observing the pirates through the scope of their sniper rifle. 

How the fuck does Teep stand the heat while wearing oh, about three or so layers? That’s it, he’s been curious ever since they first arrived in Oasis. They’ve spent days in each other’s company and not once, has he ever seen them strip down.

“Teep?”

> What?

“How are you not dying of the heat?” There, he asked. Now please answer the question so he’ll stop losing sleep over it (that might be an exaggeration but for fuck’s sake, please give him some _closure_.

Teep lowers their sniper rifle to regard him steadily. Rythian is tempted to say ‘never mind’ so that they can get on with the mission.

> You don’t wear a shield, do you?

“No,” Rythian confirms. 

A second later, a screenshot pops up in Rythian’s HUD. He opens the attachment. The screenshot displays the ‘advanced’ tab under ‘connected shield settings’. The tab that Teep’s opened is an expanded list of ‘custom modifications and commands’.

There’s a whole bunch of checkboxes listed, each with different options outlined next to them. One of the boxes is circled in red, with crudely drawn arrows pointing to the description next to it. 

It’s ‘auto-monitor environment and regulate working temperature accordingly’. In smaller text underneath that is a warning claiming ‘may drain shield battery at an unprecedented rate’. Rythian closes his HUD to stare at Teep. 

“You can mod your shield so that you’re not too hot or cold?” Seriously, it’s that simple? Wow and here he thought Teep must have incredible endurance and stamina when they’d just found a simple exploit.

> Yes. Took me fucking ages to get it working, though and it’s a drain on the battery.  
> Too bad you don’t wear a shield so you can enjoy its benefits.  
> Also, don’t tell Ravs or else he’ll hassle me to mod his shield too.

Maybe he should wear a shield, if only to avoid dying of heatstroke. Teep picks up their gun again, going back to what they’d been up to prior to Rythian interrupting them: sniping.

Five seconds later, they pull the trigger. One of the sentries on the far side of the ramparts tumbles over the railing of their tower, a rag doll plunging towards the ground. The rest of the pirates stare at their dead body, momentarily shocked. 

Rythian takes the chance to shoot as well. The rest of the pirates scramble for cover, aware that there’s a sniper, not suspecting that two are at work.

“Move,” He whispers, just loud enough for Teep to hear. They nod in agreement, lowering their gun. He follows them to the next cover, not wanting the pirates to figure out where the shots are coming from.

It’s chaos by the time they’ve taken out another five pirates, steadily making their way down into the cove. The pirates still have no idea where the shots are coming from; Rythian teleports two straight into his and Teep’s reach.

The two surprised pirates have no time to shout and alert the others of two intruders, because Rythian and Teep dispose of them with two clean cuts to the throat. They throw the bodies over the walkway, letting the sand soak up the blood and hide them. 

Slowly, they’re whittling down the pirates’ numbers until there’s only about three lef huddling behind a building, terrified out of their wits at how their comrades have all vanished into thin air (now sleeping with the fishes). Rythian lets Teep go to stalk them, splitting off to go see where the stores of water and booze are being kept.

He manages to check out a few of the buildings, creeping around still despite knowing that Teep’s killed off the last of the pirates by now. Teep finds him trying to break into one of the sheds. 

> You know you can just teleport in and open it from the other side, right?

Rythian stares at the lock, resisting the urge to facepalm; even after having the teleporter for months now, he forgets that there’s shortcuts he can now take with it in his possession. He vanishes on the spot, appearing on the other side of the door. 

He looks around. There’s barrels of water stacked in neat rows and columns. He uncorks one of them, letting a bit splash into his cupped hand. He replaces the cork.

A downwards tug on his scarf exposes his face enough so that he can lift his hand to his mouth, tasting the single mouthful of cool water. There’s a tang to it like it’s been treated recently plus the distinct, telltale taste that the water's been pulled from underground. It’ll do. He wipes his hand on his pants.

The door is unlocked, letting Teep in. Teep peers around.

“I’ll get the skiff,” Rythian says. He barely manages to teleport himself all the way back onto the cliff, after needing to walk back up the walkway before he can pull it off. It just feels like he’d barely made it by a metre. Any shorter and he’d have fallen onto a bunch of sharp, pointy rocks below (trying not to think about the skeletons scattered amongst them).

Boosting the skiff up the cliff and letting it descend into the cove is tricky; he has to use all his concentration to make sure the boost doesn’t cause it to hit any of the walls on the way down or knock into anything that could send it and him off course.

That and he has to be incredibly precise about steering it. The skiff's controls are notoriously slippery but that’s a given since it runs off an anti-gravity engine. No ground resistance to gauge how hard he has to turn the wheel; the slightest slipup and there goes all of his control.

He succeeds anyway, parking the skiff next to the walkway right by the shed. Teep’s rolled out a few barrels of water, shoving another one into place when Rythian walks over. They gesture at the shed.

> I found the booze barrels. There’s just one problem.

“What is it?” 

> Come see for yourself.

Rythian follows Teep back inside the shed. Teep silently motions to a wall; the barrels are labeled but the problem is that there’s an entire _wall_ full of barrels. 

“...That’s a lot of barrels. How many did Ravs say to take?” He blinks away his astonishment to think about how to address this problem. 

The skiff can only bear a certain load and taking back the water is critical to the mission. It’s why they’re here in the first place. But Rythian doesn’t want to disappoint Ravs either by not taking any of the alcohol-filled barrels back as well. Making multiple trips is a waste of time and effort, he feels.

> Call him and ask.

He dials Ravs on the ECHO. Ravs picks up straightaway. “Rythian! How’s the mission coming along?”

“Great. We found the water and booze.”

“So...what’s wrong?”

“There’s a lot of booze here and we only have one skiff to take the water and the booze back,” Rythian explains.

“In that case, you’ll just have to pick the best barrels and take them back. Most of the booze they make is generally the shit stuff. We’re looking for the _creme de la creme_.”

“How do we know which are the-” Rythian debates trying to repeat the phrase that Ravs had used but decides against it, “Best ones?”

“Here’s the fun part: you’ll just have to trust your tastebuds.”

“You can’t expect us to taste _all_ the barrels!” Rythian exclaims. There’s at least thirty of the fucking things stacked against the wall and more, stretching out to fill the entire length of the shed.

“No, no, you only have to taste the first barrel of each batch,” Ravs corrects. “How do you know? It’s easy, just check the dates on the sides.” Rythian peers at the first row of barrels, checking the first and second ones. “If I know my bandits, they’re very serious about their booze. They tend to keep them in order, compared to everything else they do.” 

Ravs is right. There’s a series of stamped dates along the lids and sides that match. It’s different for the second row of barrels.

“I can see the dates,” Rythian confirms. “I still think it’s a bad idea for us to taste since we’re not liquor connoisseurs like you, Ravs.”

“If that’s the case, I can get a skiff and meet up with you-”

“No! It’s too dangerous. You stay at Oasis.” Rythian pauses, adding firmly, “Also, the doctor said no alcohol.”

“What the doctor doesn’t know won’t hurt him,” Ravs smoothly counters.

“You can’t take a skiff all the way over here, you can barely walk from one end of Oasis to the other!” He’d seen Ravs walking with Nilesy and generally, Ravs tended to take a nap after; walking even just a short distance tired him out. 

It just tells Rythian that he still isn’t fully recovered. He hadn’t exactly listened to him about staying put in bed, boredom driving him to take walks. It almost seems as if Ravs is deliberately waking up early to sneak out for walks to also spite him.

“I’m getting better every day,” Ravs stubbornly insists. “Right, Teep?”

“Don’t you drag Teep into this-” Rythian begins, seeing that it’s unfair for him to solicit Teep’s assistance in this matter, being a neutral party to their argument about staying put in bed or not. He swings his head around to throw an imploring look at Teep.

Teep just sends a message consisting of one word.

> No.

“See, Teep agrees.” Rythian lets his gratefulness show in his look. Teep shrugs as Rav sighs.

“Well, I’m outnumbered,” Ravs concedes. He also sounds disappointed about missing out on getting drunk but he’ll deal. Rythian squashes the guilt that springs up in his gut at denying him the opportunity, rationalizing it as it being for Ravs’ own good. “See you two back in Oasis.” The call cuts out.

Rythian puts his ECHO device away. He now has to face the monumental task of figuring out which barrels are worthy enough to take back to Oasis with them. He looks at Teep, who looks as stoic as ever. Teep leans across to nudge him on the elbow. 

> We don’t have all day and we’d better get started.

“Wait, are you drinking them too?” In all the times that Ravs had offered, Teep’s never so much as accepted a drink from him, touched a bottle of rakk ale or kept anything of the sort on them.

> Isn’t it fucking obvious? Yes.

Teep strolls over to one of the furthest barrels, pulling out a mug from their inventory and leaning over to uncork the barrel, emptying a little bit of the barrel's contents into it. It’s dark over where they are, swathing them in shadows. 

It’s probably what they’d intended so that Rythian can’t see them pull down the layers of cloth around their face when they drink. 

Rythian goes back to minding his own business, digistructing a cup. He picks one the barrels at random, shimmying the cork out and sliding the cup under the stream of clear liquid that steadily gushes out. He replaces the cork once he’s judged that there’s enough swirling around in the cup for him to get a feel for the alcohol. Or taste, rather.

He pulls down his scarf again, bringing the cup to his mouth (unable to stop himself from grimacing at the smell) and downs the mouthful in one go. It goes down instantly, right to the back of his throat, leaving a trail akin to that of swallowing hot coals, one after another.

Not that he’s ever swallowed hot coals before but _holy shit_. It’s simultaneously the most pleasant and unpleasant thing he’s ever drank in his entire life. It doesn’t quite compare to that of booze he could buy over the counter, back in his university days- _no_ , there’s no need to think about his life prior to coming to Pandora.

He finds himself running his tongue, with enormous care to avoid accidentally stabbing it against his sharp teeth, to seek out the lingering aftertaste. He actually quite likes the afterburn. The taste itself is like vodka, except more potent. Vodka doesn’t quite describe it. That particular barrel is definitely coming with him, along with its comrade.

Huh, maybe this isn’t turning out so bad after all. After moving it aside, Rythian moves on to the next one with slightly more enthusiasm.

\--

Ravs tells Nilesy that he’s going out for a walk. Nilesy nods, continuing to sweep sand out of the hotel lobby’s carpet and out his front door.

With that, Ravs checks that he’s got his shield equipped, plus his digistruct modules (tucked in his sporran, as usual) and makes his way towards the pier. Just as he’d noted during his earlier walk with him, the Catch-A-Ride Station is tucked at the very end.

He dodges people on his way over, brushing off greetings to eventually digistruct a skiff. There’s a twinge of pain along his side when he climbs up and onto it. It fades, fortunately, once he’s straightened up. With a gentle and steady hand, he takes the skiff in the direction of Rythian and Teep’s markers, cutting across the strait towards the cove that they’re at.

He’d been lying about staying put, unable to stop himself from worrying about his two companions. He knows that they’ll be fine without him but. They’re taking a little bit too long to return from their task. It’s already been an hour and a half since he last called them, so it stands that he’s going to check up on them.

Nothing wrong with that, right? Worries buzz at the back of his mind, uncannily resembling annoying flies hovering around a rotting carcass, waiting to prey on his conscience. He absently bats them away, choosing to believe in Rythian and Teep.

The chain blocking the cove has been undone, the metal links trailing into the water. Ravs navigates his skiff through the opening. He parks it alongside the other one that’s likely Teep and Rythian’s. He steps onto the pier, making his way up to the nearest building where the door’s been flung wide open to let the hot air flow into its cool confines.

And that is how Ravs finds a completely smashed Rythian and Teep. The former is sitting with his back to a wall, staring into space. The latter is perched on a barrel close by, as silent as ever, unnaturally still in the gloom of the room.

“Ravs?” Rythian turns his eyes towards him, appearing to squint, slurring his next words, “‘s that you?”

Ravs picks his way through the maze of barrels, dropping onto a knee so that he’s at the same eye level as him, peering into Rythian’s face. 

_Wow_ , he’s never seen Rythian this drunk before. He’s only ever seen him drink half a bottle at most but never to this degree. That must be some incredibly potent booze the pirates have been hoarding. It’s exactly what he’d been after, actually.

“Can you stand?” Ravs tentatively asks. He’s mostly stopped worrying. Now he’s just anxious about whether or not he can get these two back to Oasis in one piece.

“To attention? I’m not sure. I can try, though.” Rythian abruptly rises to his feet, stumbling as he finds his world tilting awkwardly. He raises a hand to snap off a crude salute, dropping his hand after. “I _think_ I would very much like to sit down again. Before I fall flat on my face and make an idiot out of myself any more than I currently am.”

“Yes, you probably should.” Ravs takes Rythian’s elbow, tugging him along and outside, back into the sun.

Rythian yanks his arm out of his grip, his hands flying straight to his eyes. “Ouch, _too bright_!”

“Turn off your night vision?” Ravs helpfully suggests, not sure whether or not to remember this entire episode so that he can tease Rythian about it the next time he’s sober.

“That’s better,” Rythian mumbles, blinking as the world stops looking like somebody’s oversaturated his vision. Ravs leaves him leaning against one of the skiffs to go see how Teep is holding up.

He realises that he’s never seen Teep drunk before either. So far, they demonstrate an avoidance of anything involving ridiculous amounts of caffeine, sugar or alcohol. When he draws close, it elicits an upwards tilt of Teep’s head so that they can regard him steadily. It raises his hopes.

“Please don’t tell me you’re drunk as well,” Ravs starts, when a message from them pops up in his HUD barely a second later.

> well, no _shit_ sherlock  
> of course i’m drunk  
> i’m a fucking lightweight  
> and there’s a million fucking barrels to taste

That comes off as downright cantankerous, even if there’s no tone of voice to base it off of. Ravs pause, his mouth quirking into a barely suppressed smile. 

> what are you laughing at

“Nothing.”

It turns out that Teep is an abrasive and chatty drunk. Messages keep popping up in Ravs’ HUD. He chooses to ignore them, helping Teep off the barrel they’re sitting on. They sway unsteadily on their feet but remain standing.

There’s a loud splash from outside like someone or something might have fallen off the pier and into the water. Ravs and Teep walk outside to investigate. Rythian’s missing from where Ravs had left him. Confused, he looks around the pier for what might have made that noise instead. 

A second later, a soaked from head to toe Rythian appears on the pier on his hands and knees, startling Ravs. 

Teep just stares at the sight, supremely unimpressed. Rythian hacks up sea water, onto the wooden boards. He makes a face at the lingering, salty taste once the last of it leaves his mouth and rolls onto his back, his chest heaving.

Ravs is reminded of a grumpy, bedraggled cat that’s just successfully escaped a bath.

“I fell off the pier, _okay_ ,” Rythian eventually grumbles, content with remaining spread-eagled. “I almost drowned,” He laments, closing his eyes. He leaves an outline behind when he shifts about.

> yes, we know your life sucks  
> get over it  
> it’s not going to get any better

Teep appears to glare at Ravs when he tries to hush them, except Rythian proceeds to say in an increasingly distressed voice, “For once, I actually agree with you. I’ve been on this planet for too long, I have no way home, _can’t_ , go home,” He hastily corrects, continuing on, “my two best friends drive me nuts constantly-”

> if you weren’t such a stick in the mud and a noob

Ravs grabs Teep by the arm, pushing them towards the other skiff. “Why don’t you go and sit down over there while I get Rythian on board?”

> I’d argue with you but that seems like a reasonable suggestion, so I will

“-wouldn’t recognize me, burned my last thesis, there goes my career and my entire _life’s_ work, people keep dying because of me, I’m sick of being tired and tired of being sick in the head, just let me crawl back into the water and not come back up for air.” Rythian sits up, getting to his feet and moving towards the edge of the pier.

Ravs grabs him by the scarf, hastily reeling him back in and away from the ocean. Rythian lets him, staring miserably at the wooden boards like he’s never seen them before. Possibly now embarrassed that he’d just said all that within earshot of him.

“Just because things are bad right now doesn’t mean that they won’t get better,” Ravs admonishes, but gently, so that Rythian isn’t inclined to twist his words around.

“It’s all because of _this_.” Rythian reaches up to clumsily undo the leather cord holding the little trinket in place around his neck, freeing it so it sits in the palm of his hand instead. Water droplets glisten on its surface. They follow the curves and edges so that a puddle forms in his hand. His spidery fingers fold over the trinket, the joints of his fingers paling as if he’s trying to crush the trinket. “I wouldn’t be stuck here if it weren’t for it!”

Rythian pulls his arm back as if he intends to lob it into the water. Ravs lets go of his scarf, immediately grabbing his arm, putting one hand over the top of Rythian’s clenched fist. Rythian struggles, failing to wrench his arm free, given Ravs’ sudden vice-like grip. Even while injured, his strength is still unmatched.

His hands are infuriatingly warm. Rythian knows he’s getting sea water all over said hands and Ravs’ front with how close they’re standing. If only he could get rid of the stupid fucking thing, his life would be a lot more simpler. 

“Ravs, _let_ go,” Rythian grounds out (more like rasps, his throat still sore from coughing up all that water back there).

“You’ll regret throwing that away once you’re sober,” Ravs immediately points out. 

In the end, he knows that he’s just deluding himself ( _projecting_ , if that’s the word), letting Ravs guide his arm down to his side with a gentleness that is in complete contrast to his grip.

Only when Ravs is sure that Rythian won’t try that again does he takes his hands away. He knows how much he values the tiny thing, never lets it out of sight, never takes it off its cord; this is the first time he’s ever done so, driven by whatever demons he’s currently clashing with. 

Cherish is the wrong word for how Rythian behaves in regards to it. Keeping guard is a more apt description. So yes, Ravs prefers it around Rythian’s neck, rather than it being cut loose and dangling dangerously out in the open like this. He’d rather have Rythian regret-free once he’s sobered up.

“It’s a good thing you’re here then,” Rythian says, a touch disparagingly.

Ravs pretends he hasn’t just said that, settling for watching Rythian like a hawk as he moves to retie the cord around his neck. His fingers are still slippery from the brine of the ocean slicked across them. Since he’s also drunk, his hand-eye coordination is also mostly shot to hell. The result is that he fails twice to tie the knot, his hatred for himself rising with every frustrated attempt.

Seeing him struggle, Ravs wipes his hands on his kilt, moving behind him to help retie the leather knot. Rythian stills, letting him take both ends and twist them together, imitating the knot he’d seen earlier. He tugs on the knot he’d created to check if it’ll hold. It doesn’t budge, exactly what he’d been going for. 

The leather was cut, tanned and cured from a rakk-hive. It feels tough and gritty, unlikely to fall apart at the slightest touch despite its age and appearance. It’d take the sharpest of knives to cut through it. 

Only Ravs and Rythian now know how to undo the knot without it warping or growing more tangled with every botched attempt. Rythian had made the right choice of cord.

Ravs draws back, his task done. Rythian eventually lifts his head, opening his eyes and tosses a reproachful look at him. “I’m sorry.” He has the regretful look of someone who is standing on the edge of an abyss full of self-inflicted misery born of overindulging in alcohol.

“Don’t worry about it.” A light pat on the shoulder causes Rythian to look even more sheepish at how accepting Ravs is being. “I shouldn’t have sent you on this mission if I’d known you and Teep to be lightweights.” Minus the murder spree the two have been on. That’s not really something Ravs particularly cares about.

“I actually drank about…” Rythian appears to mentally count before inelegantly raising his hands, the fingers of both soaked, bandaged hands folding down to indicate how much he’d drank. Ravs stares. “ _Six_ entire cups,” He admits, squinting at his own hands like he’s not sure if he’s got the right fingers folded down.

> I drank about seven

“It’s not a competition!” Rythian shouts in Teep’s direction, his voice carrying across the pier to them. Ravs is not sure whether to be impressed or not at Rythian’s lack of tolerance, noting it as something he should keep an eye on in the future.

> Rythian, you’d better not be drinking alone  
> because that would be incredibly sad  
> also I thought we were friends you asshole

“We are friends!”

> doesn’t seem like it, if you keep fucking dawdling and wasting my time like this

“I’ll get the barrels on board,” Ravs says, struggling not to laugh at the two of them sniping at each other. At least they’re not butting heads, like the drunks he’s used to dealing with. “You get on the skiff with Teep, before you fall in again.”

Rythian sees him looking at the other skiff, knowing that he intends to despawn it and just take the one skiff back.

“I might be drunk, but I’m sure we can bring back twice as much if I drive the other skiff.” Rythian says, perking up since he clearly thinks it’s the best idea he’s ever proposed in the history of Pandora. 

Well, at least he’s not looking like he’s about to throw himself or his trinket or both into the abyss, which Ravs is thankful for.

“Are you sure? I don’t think that’s a wise idea, since you’re…” Ravs trails off, the conclusion obvious.

“You can _trust me_ ,” Rythian says, grinning over the top of his scarf, the pointed tips of his teeth showing, that’s how broad his grin is. 

Ravs decides just to be safe, he discreetly checks that the second skiff is set to auto-pilot when it suffers a collision. Also, Rythian soon figures out that he can move multiple barrels using his teleporter, which significantly speeds up loading the skiffs.

Go figures that he’d do so while drunk (see, he has the best ideas while sloshed). Despite their own drunkenness, Teep decides to help. They lash everything into place with rope dug up from somewhere, tying anything loose down while Ravs and Rythian pile everything on board.

Miraculously, the entire process goes smoothly without a single mishap.

Securing the cargo includes one attempt to do the same for Rythian while he’s sunning himself on the deck, eyes having drifted shut from the sun and not noticing the ropes snaking around his arms and feet until he feels them tightening.

He’d teleported himself out of the mess, much to Teep’s disappointment. Once he’d appeared somewhere safe, he’d threatened to teleport Teep into the water. Teep shrugged and went back to checking that all the cargo isn’t loose or is going to tumble out with the skiff’s abrupt motions. Even when drunk, Rythian doesn’t dare find out what’ll happen if he actually follows up on that threat.

They take all the water and half of the booze barrels. Rythian’s mostly sobered up and dried off so he’s in a better condition to drive once they’re done and ready to leave. Ravs (with one Teep napping on the deck) departs the cove first, never exceeding the maximum speed limit or risk the barrels breaking free of their restraints.

Rythian follows in the second skiff. He’s actually having to concentrate harder than usual to stay on course and awake. Left alone with his thoughts at last, he considers untying the trinket and secretly dropping it into the water while Ravs’ back is turned (yes, continuing to delude himself).

The more rational part of him argues that the damn thing has to stay with him. The last time it’d left his hands, look at what’d happened (so much blood, not all of it his, and _death_ ). Surely he doesn’t want that to happen again, right? If he knows his Pandoran seasons, the ocean will dry up at some point and reveal the trinket on the bottom of the seabed, sure to be picked up by any random stranger passing through.

Any stranger curious about the origins will surely place inquiries, tracing it back to him and well, he’d be back on the run again in no time. He’s not even sure if Ravs and Teep will tolerate becoming known accomplices or harassed by other Vault Hunters. The two have their own plans and it definitely doesn’t involve the latter happening.

Ravs wants to settle down somewhere, with or without Rythian and Teep. Teep? Well, they’ve been happy to follow him and Ravs around so far, but if they’re going to be hounded constantly, they might have second thoughts about associating with him.

Rythian would rather avoid those risks. What he doesn’t know is that the two of them would gladly follow him to hell and back. They'd be less glad to know that Rythian thinks so little of the unbreakable bond that’d sprung up during their travels together.

It’s decided: the trinket stays with him, even if every fibre of his being despises that idea. He’s already been stuck with it for this long. What harm could it possibly pose if he stands by that decision for what might be the rest of his life?

\--

As it turns out, Nilesy actually did have a bar as one of the side rooms, albeit it’d gone unused for years since he’d never really figured what to do with it and he’s not really the bartending type. It’d taken him most of the day to clean it out. Ravs had sweet-talked the local carpenter into making some swift repairs. So the bar had been ready a few hours before the sun set.

While the bar’s being set up, Ravs had escorted Teep and Rythian upstairs to sleep off their hangover, hauled most of the barrels into storage, set some up by the bar, and picked up the reward of the ‘get water’ mission from the mayor of Oasis while doing some of Nilesy’s chores for him.

He’d casually mentioned to the mayor that Nilesy’s opening up a bar in his hotel later in the evening and maybe it’d be nice for them to show up? And to spread the word, since that’d be appreciated. See, he’s not using his charm for anything diabolical.

Now it’s well into evening; the bar’s opening had gone off without a hitch. Ravs and Nilesy had snuck away onto the rooftop of the hotel for a twenty minute break (the bar temporarily closed). They’d taken some of the bottled booze up with them.

Ravs figures that he might as well enjoy the spoils of raiding the pirate cove while chatting to Nilesy. The conversation turns from Nilesy expressing his surprise at the bar being so well-received to talk about what’d happened at the cove to personal topics.

It’s the alcohol that’s loosened their tongues; neither of them particularly like talking about home when sober, the pang of nostalgia too sharp for either of their liking then.

“What’s your homeworld?” Nilesy decides to ask, taking a risk he usually wouldn’t have. It’s a warm night out, barely a chill in the air so there’s no really need for him to find and dig out warmer clothing.

“Dionysus,” Ravs says, unable to stop a wistful look appearing on his face. He raises the hand holding his bottle of rakk ale to gesture to Nilesy. “You?”

“Tethys.”

“Really?” Not a place that he’d expected Nilesy to have come from. “Your accent sounds closer to that of Pandoran. I actually thought you were born here.” Ravs smiles. It comes off sheepish to Nilesy, who has already forgiven him.

“It’s alright, I get that a lot.” Nilesy gives a shrug like he really doesn’t care or is offended (such a minor thing to get upset about). “I came here with my parents when I was very little. When I got old enough, I struck out on my own,” He carefully says, pausing briefly to polish off his drink. ”Ended up in Oasis, of all places. Stayed ever since.” 

Nilesy doesn’t particularly want to indulge why he’d settled here and hadn’t ever left despite being tempted to, multiple times. There’s nothing but pain in those thoughts. He shoves them aside, wanting to enjoy the night with Ravs, not spoil it with talk of his troubles. 

If he lets them spill, he’s not sure if he’ll be able to stop it. He sticks to the notion that it’s’ better to avoid that altogether.

“Ah, parents,” Ravs drawls, his accent growing even more prominent with his pronunciation. He puts down his empty bottle to crack open another one and take a long drag from it. Nilesy can’t help but feel relieved that he hadn’t thought to ask. “Another bottle of rakk ale?” Ravs offers from the cooler by their feet, the ice in it already half-melted.

“Nah, I’m drunk enough already.” He’s only downed one and a half bottles, already feeling the effects manifest as his face reddening more than he’d have liked, the lightheadedness, and playing hopscotch with the boundaries of ‘socially appropriate and not socially appropriate topics for two smashed people’. 

“Fair enough.” Ravs is on his third bottle, though. He can respect someone keeping in mind their own tolerance (compared to two other certain _people_ who are currently hiding in the hotel's first floor room, away from the social clamor happening under their feet).

“You look sad,” Nilesy quietly observes, after a bout of silence that is neither awkward or tense. 

He fondly mulls over the fact that they’ve come so far, starting out as strangers meeting under the worst of circumstances to becoming companions who could confide in each other like this. It’s something he’d never expected to have happen to him. Frankly, if this is what friendship is, he’ll _embrace_ the concept and never let it go.

“Ah, it’s the alcohol that’s making me look sad, I’m not actually sad,” Ravs lies, exchanging his wistful look for a neutral one. Not that he’s worrying about slipping up, he trusts this is strictly between Nilesy and him. Not even Rythian and Teep know of his history prior to running with bandits, up until he ran a bloodthirsty arena (good times, that). “I shouldn’t be drinking so much or Rythian will get annoyed and snitch to the doctor.”

“Dionysus is a fair ways away. Can’t imagine you’d willingly leaving that place for this shithole.”

“You’re right. I didn’t go willingly. Not at first.” With a heavy hand, Ravs puts down his bottle onto the bit of brick wall jutting out from the roof doubling as the railing. The glass of the bottle holds, thankfully.

“What happened?” Nilesy leans back on the wall or else he’ll have to settle for sitting down, his lightheadedness at its peak. Any more and he’ll have to call it an early night. He doesn’t want that. Ravs must be feeling rather indulgent, more so than usual. Or he genuinely likes him, proving that he’s willing to answer. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

It’s both reasons. “Spot of trouble with the local authorities over what constitutes as ‘homebrewed’ and ‘illegally brewed’ booze.”

“They shipped you here for _that_?” Nilesy shoves off the wall, driven by the shock of rage that flares into life. It’s smothered (only just) by his reserve kicking in, stopping him demanding to know exactly what had gone down. His yell echoes down the alleys, thankfully cruising past inattentive ears.

“Calm down, it happened years ago. I’m over it.” A nonchalant shrug from Ravs indicates as much. Nilesy rapidly does the math and concludes that Ravs must have been on Pandora for quite a while now. Not as long as him, but still quite a long time, given Pandora’s drawn out cycles and erratic orbit around one of the galaxy’s stars keeping the planets around it lit.

“You could get a ticket back-”

“I never served my full term in the place they sent me to.” Ravs’ voice hardens. “If I go home, they’d just send me back here again, like all the other people they ship out to Pandora as punishment for what,” He pauses, if only to throw an exasperated hand up into the air, now aware that he’s drunkenly rambling, the floodgates now pried open, “Breaking a single law that should have cut a kid who didn’t know any better some slack?”

There’s no interrupting this ramble. 

Ravs is practically mutilating one of his oldest wounds of his own free will and letting it openly bleed for the sake of explaining to Nilesy just how precisely he’d arrived on his planet. 

Lurking underneath all his steadiness is the constant, pervasive question of ‘what if?’ to keep him up at night, caging him in with toxic bars crafted of his worst anxieties, constantly wondering if he’ll ever be able to go home.

The tears had dried up a week after his arrival. Surviving, not being homesick, had been the only thing on his mind after. He’d started running when he and several runaways had banded together. Hot on its heels had come ‘fighting’. 

Being able to throw a punch to take someone down in one hit to preserve ammo had been great (still is, depending on how much of a mess he makes of their face). Being able to throw a punch that killed someone in one hit (for example, the nose bone; smash it back with enough force and well, it goes where it shouldn’t) had been even _better_.

Without a doubt, Pandora’s toughened him up (but Ravs will always be his mama’s boy, fuck anybody who said otherwise, nothing’s wrong with caring for the person who gave birth to and raised him, single-handedly).

Even now, physical activity of any kind kept the cage’s closing at bay. While healing up, he’d settled for walks when he can’t work himself into a tired mess to pass out at the first opportunity. It’s something Rythian’s never quite figured out (oh, but he thinks he has; even the most friendliest and trustworthy of people hid shadows deep in their hearts, including Rythian).

“Eighteen ain’t a kid’s age, but anybody with even half a fucking _brain_ can tell you that ripping an eighteen year old kid away from his mom who could barely make ends meet at the time is cruel.” The waters pouring out of the floodgate start to slow down, long enough for him to curl his hand up into a fist, his knuckle bones pressing together into a gratifying ache. It’s that or punch something. “Do you know what’s crueler than that?” His voice softens with that question.

Nilesy shakes his head, not having the nerve to guess.

“Sending the kid far, far away from his mom, with no way back home.” His hand comes down to rest on the brick wall as he heaves a deep, forlorn sigh, the waters receding to a trickle. “I’d be arrested on home turf as a ‘bandit’ before even taking one step out of the spaceship-”

“Wait, _what_? You were a _bandit_?” Nilesy’s poor inebriated mind screeches to a halt with that one word, his eyes widening with fear under his glasses. He wipes it from his gaze a second later (manners, for one thing).

There’s the awkward pause at last. Ravs closes the floodgates, dusting his hands off after. He’s already done licking that particular wound clean after tearing it open. Now to let it scab over again.

“Rythian or Teep didn’t tell you? Well, I’m a former bandit.” He looks straight at Nilesy to gauge his reaction, fully aware that bandits aren’t exactly well-liked by most Pandorans. “If you were expecting me to feed you the line ‘you never asked’, that ain’t happening.”

“You don’t look like one-” Nilesy holds back an amused snort, wanting to say something rather than nothing. 

It’s true that he doesn’t like bandits; he’d thought that Ravs had come to Pandora as a Vault Hunter (he doubts they all come with angelic pasts), not having started out as a bandit. Then again, it’s that obvious, his mind just hadn’t put all the pieces until Ravs had said it so openly.

However, Ravs had said ‘former bandit’. 

He’s not running around murdering people or whatever bandits get up to, in his spare time anymore. For whatever reason, he’d stopped all that. One day, maybe Ravs will tell him the story of how he got out of all that. After all, one didn’t just stop being a bandit overnight or else there’d be less bandits roaming around to begin with.

“I stopped being one several months back.” Ravs had seen the fear flashing through his eyes, knows that look (had enjoyed it once, now hates it, especially if it’s on a friend’s face and he’s the cause). He shouldn’t have said so much. ”Listen, Nilesy, I understand completely if you don’t want to talk to me anymore-” He moves to go.

“Don’t be stupid!” Nilesy reaches out to grab his arm, stopping him from leaving. “You said you stopped being one.” Ravs stares at him. “So in my eyes, you’re alright,” He adds, with as much sincerity as he can muster behind those words, to let Ravs knows that’s dead serious.

“You’re being awfully optimistic, but I’m not complaining.” Ravs visibly relaxes. Nilesy takes his hand away, leaning back on the wall, wishing his heart would slow down already. 

Also, Ravs’ arm had felt rock solid underneath is palm, nothing but wiry muscle there. There is very little doubt that if Ravs wanted to kill him with just his bare hands, he could very well do so and without little effort on his part.

“You got a problem with that?” Nilesy levels a serious look at him, putting on his best ‘I’m for real’ face that just makes it look like he’s squinting at the optometrist’s pyramid of letters.

“No, no, it’s just the last thing I ever expected to hear. That’s what I like about you, Rythian and Teep.” Ravs lets out a sigh that would have been a laugh, if he’d hadn’t felt guilty about doubting Nilesy. “Sorry. I must be drunker than I thought, to get so emotional.”

“I’m sorry, too.” Nilesy says. “I thought you’d be able to hold more than two bottles. I didn’t peg you to be a complete lightweight,” He jokes (despite the evidence in front of them proving that Ravs isn’t one).

“What can I say, the rakk ale Teep and Rythian liberated is the good stuff.”

“I could be charging more for these, then.”

“You should. This stuff ain’t easy to make.” Ravs starts to pick up all the empty bottles that clink in his hands. “And Nilesy?”

“That’s my name.”

“Thank you-”

“Oh, not a problem-”

“Hold on. Thank you, for everything. For listening. There, I’m done.”

“...We should go back inside. It’s getting cold out.” Nilesy pushes off the wall to scoop up his own bottles and pick up the cooler full of melted ice and still capped bottles of rakk ale.

“Not bad for an opening night. I should get back to bartending, chances are that people are already wanting refills.”

“Chances are they’d also miss your pretty face,” Nilesy mumbles under his breath. Ravs blinks at him, holding the door open for him so that he can walk past him and back into the stairwell.

“Did you say something?”

“Nothing.”

The two walk back inside, down the stairs. Nilesy sneaks a peek the tips that people have been leaving for Ravs the entire night. He draws away as the beginnings of an idea flutters at the edge of his mind, jolting him: this is his chance to return the seventy dollars.

Waiting until Ravs has stepped away to tend to someone’s refill on the far side of the bar, Nilesy withdraws the seventy dollars and slides it in so that it’s at the very bottom of the pile.The pile is carefully rearranged back into place. Ravs won’t suspect a thing unless he’s _that_ observant.

An hour after the bar’s closing, Nilesy has finished picking up the trash left scattered around the room from the opening night. He slips outside to drop it all into the dumpster back there. He rests against the wall for a few moments, cursing at his lack of physical strength and fitness. 

It’s also not helped by how drunk he is. Honestly, he could close up and go to bed right now, and deal with the rest of the mess once he wakes up. He’s anticipating a hell of a hangover. It’s a small price to pay for a memorable evening.

All that free time on his hands and what does he do? Spend it browsing the ECHOnet (contrary to what people believed, only 50% of that time is devoted to curating his collection of cat videos and pictures) and playing a good little hotelkeeper, that’s what, instead of getting fit.

Maybe someday, he’ll actually pick up the motivation to start getting into shape. Until then, he feels that there’s nothing wrong with how he currently is. He closes the back door behind him. Oh, he almost forgot. He checks that it’s locked first. It is. He heads off into the kitchen to wash his hands.

There are footsteps that his ears pick up, just over the sound of him frantically trying to get some sort of greasy smear off his palm with warm water and soap. The footsteps are right behind him, on his right hand side. Nilesy shuts off the tap and flicks his hands free of water, whirling around to confront who it is.

It’s dark in the kitchen. The only light is from the hallway directly behind Ravs, the silhouette at his feet barely resembling that of his form. Nilesy lifts his eyes up to Ravs’ face. His face has a dark shadow drawn across it, concealing his expression.

Swallowing nervously, Nilesy backs up against the kitchen counter, his fingers finding the cold, hard metal frame of the sink, curling around the edge and finding strength. His heartbeat is steady in his chest. The tiniest flicker of fear darts outwards from somewhere deep within his brain, warning the rest of him to be careful.

Ravs remains where he’s standing, as silent as the dead of the night. 

Nilesy takes one deep breath, willing himself to keep his voice steady ( _‘don’t piss off a former bandit, don’t piss off a former bandit, don’t piss off a former bandit, don’t piss off a former bandit’_ runs like a protective mantra through his head) and tentatively says with confidence that is as shaky as he currently feels on the inside, ”Maybe somebody was feeling generous.”

When Ravs speaks, he sounds unsure like he doesn’t want to believe what Nilesy’s just done, “I’ve been counting the money as it came in. This,” He lifts his hand, unfolding his fingers to reveal the same seventy dollars Nilesy had slipped in, “wasn’t a part of it.”

“Ah,” is the only response Nilesy can give (a soft exhale of air, nothing more), his own gaze flicking to the accursed notes. He hadn’t counted on Ravs to have ever figured it out. He doesn’t have a backup plan ready for if he _had_.

“Why do you keep returning the money?” Ravs is genuinely baffled by Nilesy’s persistence. 

He can’t understand why he won’t accept it. From the very first day, he’d assumed that it’d been some sort of silly game. He had thought the game had ended when the money hadn’t turned up in places he’d expected after Rythian had snuck it back into Nilesy’s back pocket.

He’d finally thought Nilesy had come around on that front. To find those seventy dollars on what should have been a lovely evening had been something of a moodkiller, forcing him to seek out Nilesy. He’s not confronting Nilesy.

Rather, he wants to _understand_ what would drive someone as kind as him to look down on a gesture that reciprocates all that kindness.

The worst part is that Nilesy looks (no, _is_ ) terrified of him seeking to understand. He’s trying so hard to smother his fear but Ravs can see it, as plain as daylight on him.

It’s so obvious when Nilesy speaks. His voice possesses a quaver like a man confessing to his wrongdoings in the hopes of garnering mercy for his honesty. He is the very picture of someone never having seen true justice dealt, all hope in the system stamped out.

It’s reflected back at Ravs wherever he goes, these days. He’d certainly seen his fair share of it back at the place he’d initially escaped from, prior to meeting Rythian.

“I don’t want it.”

The four words pierce Ravs’ heart, a hurt like no other. It’s not like being stabbed or shot, just pure _pain_ on an unimaginable level. 

So this is what true pain is, the pain of having someone you thought you understood pulling the carpet, rather, the entire floor out from under you. No, you never understood them in the first place. Who is he to think he did?

“Nilesy-”

Nilesy’s voice goes hard, growing louder as he repeats those same words, “I said, _I don’t want it_.” 

His nails are going to break at how strong he’s gripping onto the edge of the counter behind him (because if he lets go, lets his own nails dig into his palm, he’ll just hurt himself and he doesn’t want Ravs to see that).

Ravs lifts a hand. That it’s, he’s really done it now, he’s surely pissed him off, there can only be nothing but _pain_ (and glasses in this day and age are expensive, to boot, there goes a good chunk of his lifetime savings). Nilesy inhales sharply, letting go of the counter to throw both of his arms up and over his head in a protective gesture.

He squeezes his eyes shut, anticipating a series of crushing blows set to break his arms (but that’s fine, he can handle that, just not his head, glasses or face, where they’d have really done some serious damage).

Nothing.

Someone (not him) exhales sharply like they’d just been punched in the gut. Nilesy’s curiosity gets the better of him. He opens his eyes to peer through the gap in his arms. He doesn’t see Ravs’ expression since he’s just turned his back on him. Ravs strides out of the kitchen, his footsteps fading. The stairs creak, softly.

Nilesy is left alone in the dark with nothing more than the atrocious feeling of having committed a giant mistake, of having just stabbed Ravs in the back, right through his heart and he hadn’t seen it coming, not at all.

\--

For the next three days, Nilesy throws his entire being into staying out of Ravs’ way, becoming a ghost in his own home.

The other two Vault Hunters show no inclination of wanting to march Nilesy in front of Ravs, to sort out the mess in the most direct way possible. Ravs shows no signs of wanting their involvement either. Nilesy appreciates the former’s discretion, even if there’s no quarrel with them.

After the past few days of being in Ravs’ constant company, his sudden absence is having the not entirely unforeseen effect of dragging down Nilesy’s spirits. He turns his head to find him, a bit of conversation on the tip of his tongue. He’s forced to swallow it because oh right, Ravs isn’t there to listen to him.

So yes, Nilesy misses him. Don’t get him wrong, he’s not interested in him in _that_ way; he enjoys his company as the kind that close friends enjoyed.

Now he’s remembering that right after they’d had their chat, Ravs had glanced around the packed bar on that one night, leaned in close to him and whispered, “If you wanted to, I could set you up with anyone you want in this room. All you have to do is say the word.” 

He’d then leaned back with the most incredibly self-assured look Nilesy has ever seen on anyone. Trust him to use his charm with the townsfolk to play matchmaker.

Nilesy had primly responded with, “Thank you but no, I’m not interested in one night stands.”

“I also meant long-term,” Ravs had smugly added.

He had been so tempted to retort, ‘If that’s the case, set me up with _you_ ’, if only to see whether or not that would have wiped that look off of Ravs’ face. He’s never seen Ravs nonplussed before. Since his flirting game isn’t on par with his, he’d just shaken his head, sipped from his pina colada and people-watched instead.

They hadn’t had more chances to talk after that since people had started flocking to the bar, stealing Ravs’ attention away from him.

Right now, Nilesy is crouching behind his front counter at the first sound of Rythian, Teep and Ravs coming down the stairs. Ravs has been slowly going outside more and more, with his recovery nearing completion. 

Being shot is nothing to sneeze at but he makes getting back on his feet look effortless. The three set of footsteps arrive at the foot of the stairs, trooping across the lobby, except. One of them pauses by his counter with a searching air.

He squeezes himself right into the corner, holding his breath and curling his hands around his knees, making himself as small as possible. Since he’s a stickler for dust-free environments, there is no way he could give himself away by accidentally sneezing and living up to that cliche.

Five incredibly tense seconds later, the footsteps appear to give up and move on. His front door closes, the bell there jingling merrily. He should get rid of that stupid bell. It’d been a great mood uplifter but now it’s just downright irritating to hear.

Nilesy crawls out from under the hotel counter and settles back in his chair. Not even his favourite cat videos are cheering him up. He lets his head fall onto the desk with a dull ‘thunk’. That hurts but it probably doesn’t compare to the pain of what he’d said to Ravs a few nights ago.

The feeling of an empty stomach is starting to get to him, as well as the gravity of his mistake.

He’d skipped breakfast, seeing as the Vault Hunters had been using his kitchen early every morning. It’d been nice _trying_ to sleep in. He hadn't ever been able to actually sleep in, ears constantly pricked for the sound of his hotel’s front door closing. 

Starting from the second the Vault Hunters had left, he gets out of bed to rush through his daily chores, hastily throw together a decent meal, scarfing it down. Just in time too, as the Vault Hunters usually returned by then. He can hide in his room with the door locked to avoid meeting them. 

Good thing he’s got the trusty, ever present ECHOnet to entertain him in the meantime, the volume turned down low.

Only when he’s sure that they’re back upstairs does he bother to emerge to retake the front counter. If he can’t make it to his room in time, he resorts to hiding under the counter.

He’s gotten the hang of predicting when they’ll be back and gone over the past week or so, narrowing the time frame down to ten minutes. That said, Nilesy feels like his luck is dwindling when it came to successful near-misses.

The day before, he had heard Rythian wonder out loud, “Where’s Nilesy gone? I haven’t seen him lately.” 

Footsteps approached his bedroom door; he forgotten to lock it and since he’s not in a position to dive at it and lock because that’d just give himself away, he’d just braced himself for the knock and entry.

Ravs’ calm voice had stopped Rythian in his tracks. “Let him sleep in, he works too hard. He deserves a break every now and then, what with the stress of having a new bar and all.” There’d been no malice in his tone at all, just kind concern that Nilesy feels undeserving of.

There’d been an awkward pause, like Rythian had appeared to doubt Ravs’ claim, because even he has a rough idea of Nilesy’s daily schedule to know that something is wrong.

In the end, he’d chosen to believe Ravs and left Nilesy alone. And Nilesy is not sure whether to feel even more guilty for his mistake. Ravs had deliberately stepped in there to cover him when he hadn’t needed to.

It’s like he’s respecting Nilesy’s right to have space. Too bad Nilesy can’t extend him that same courtesy.

Aside from skipping out on breakfast (that’s now become brunch), rushing his chores (annihilating his record), and playing ‘hide and seek’ with the Vault Hunters, the rest of his days goes by in a perpetual state of vapid, tear-inducing boredom, the hours going by like a bland film playing at a snail’s pace. 

There’s only so much entertainment the ECHOnet can provide to stave off the inevitable boredom. He’s not going to look for trouble though, when trouble is already in his home.

Ravs bartends at night for him; Nilesy leaves his pay on the kitchen table for him to find later on, choosing to hide in his bedroom at those times.

Good god, if he’d known that if this is what his life now consists of, sans the excitement of the three’s antics and company, his life really is _sad_. If he had to sum up his life like something he’d slap down in the description of a dating profile, it’d look like this:

> Nilesy, male, single, looking for long term serious relationship, Oasis, Pandora, very _eligible_ bachelor, in early to middle twenties, feline expert, aspiring feline owner, has single-handedly managed own business (including pool) for about five years and counting, able to source water that won’t give you the runs, and definitely won’t shoot you in the face with a shotgun on the first date.
> 
> I’m shrewd spender (aka a cheapskate and bargain hunter, you have been warned), an amazing conversationalist in one on one situations (I turn into a gibbering mess in group situations, so if you can put up with that, what are you waiting for, message me already). I’m a master at exuding a refined aura of quiet charisma under normal circumstances. I also enjoy walks at sunset along the beach in a sandworm free environment.
> 
> You won’t find me slacking off around the house drinking beer all day; I’m a handyman (don’t let the profile picture fool you, I can also make a mean omelette) and abhor messes of any kind, so expect me to clean and fix all your shit like there’s no tomorrow. I also have a sense of humor and am a massive troll. I am also a pacifist and will be completely useless in situations involving violence, explosions, guns and bullets.
> 
> Do not contact me with unsolicited offers, invites for one night stands and etc. All genders and orientations welcome. If you have a cat, maybe I’ll hear you out. 
> 
> Disclaimer: this is not an invitation to or mean you can actually shoot _me_ in the face.

Putting all that into perspective? His life doesn’t amount to all that much. He’s not even that _exciting_ of a person, preferring a low-key and unimpressive lifestyle. All the ambition he has would probably weigh an impressive milligram.

The only things he’s got going in his life that are of worth is the cat obsession, being able to save people by making sure they don’t die of dehydration through importing water, and giving those who could afford the fees a temporary roof over their heads. There’s other less, likeable things about him but he won’t go into them.

Adding to all that is that Ravs likely hates his guts by now and especially after everything he’d done for him too.

Nilesy fights off the urge to go and crawl under his counter in utter, wretched shame. Since that’d defeat the purpose of him manning his hotel counter, he focuses on distracting himself with making sure that his other collection of cat pictures have no two same cats.

It’s a poor distraction but it works. He stops to make himself brunch; the Vault Hunters are gone for quite a while today, which is unusual. Nilesy knows that they haven’t left town. They seemed like the decent sort to tell him first despite having paid their day’s upkeep fee in advance (the usual amount of money left on his kitchen table, after their breakfast).

He actually has the time to make himself a filling brunch (leftover toasted bread, fried eggs and sausages, he’s that easy to please), relishing having a meal that for once, isn’t hastily thrown together due to a lack of time. Too busy wiping up the dregs of the egg yolk with his last piece of bread, he misses the sound of the front door’s bell jingling.

Ravs breezes into the kitchen. Nilesy lifts his head, in the middle of munching. Their eyes meet. Both of them freeze. Clearly they hadn’t expected to see each other. Nilesy starts first, remembering to swallow before standing up, accidentally bumping the underside of the table in the process.

His plate clatters when it’s jolted from the motion. Nilesy puts out a hand to still it. There’s crumbs on the corner of his mouth that he wipes away with the back of his hand, painfully aware that he’s now skittish, more so than usual, at being caught off guard like this.

“Are you avoiding me?” Ravs quietly asks. For the first time, Nilesy sees that he holds himself uncertainly, not sure whether or not Nilesy hates him.

“No, I’m not,” Nilesy carefully lies, his poker face in place.

“If I did offend you in pressuring you to take the money, I’m sorry.” He sounds genuinely apologetic, which just makes whatever renewed feelings of guilt in Nilesy even _worse_. “Or if I scared you that night.”

Fuck it. He has nothing to lose or gain. If Ravs had wanted to hit him, there’d been plenty of opportunities, in the past.

“You didn’t scare me that night,” Nilesy softly says, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “If anything, I should be the one saying sorry, for thinking you were going to hit me.” He looks down at his empty plate, the other elephant in the room trumpeting in protest for being deliberately ignored. 

There, he said half of what he needed to say. Now to see how well it’s received.

“Nilesy, I was never going to hit you, I’d never-” are Ravs’ quiet and horrified words. “Why would you even think _that_?” 

Nilesy doesn’t have to look up to know that Ravs expression is one of righteous fury, its full intensity smothered underneath a neutrality that’s threatening to slip any second. It’s that bright. 

“Let’s just say that I’ve had bad experiences with other hotel patrons.” That comes out in an uncharacteristic, hushed voice as if Nilesy is a small, defenceless child being unfairly rebuked.

“What are you talking about-”

He lifts his left arm, lightly tapping the bone with a finger. “Broken twice.” Points to his collarbone. “Once.” Gestures to his glasses. “Third pair.” Taps his knee. “Bruised to the point of needing a cane for about a week once.” He lets his hands fall to his sides.

There’s more to that list, but by now, Ravs has a good idea of what sort of people passed through Oasis. Inevitably, those people needed a place to stay and he runs the only hotel in town.

Ravs walks over to him, stepping around the kitchen table and stops so that he’s standing in front of Nilesy. There’s an expression there that is unfamiliar to Nilesy, one of such sympathy born out of tender concern. For once, it’s not pity. Pity is people whispering behind his back, upon seeing him limp to the doctor after another beating, better him than them.

He reaches out and simply pulls Nilesy into a hug. 

Ravs is impossibly _warm_ , warmer than he’d thought. He’s just returned from an outside trip, so he smells like the dry desert air. It mingles with the air of the ocean, a hint of something distinctly human underneath that he thinks is sweat and blood not quite entirely washed off. It’s not unpleasant.

Being held like this is filling some sort of physical need Nilesy hadn’t known existed within him. He can’t help but fully relax into that hug, resting his chin on Ravs’ shoulder, wanting very much to cry. He’d been all alone in this wretched town, up until that one fateful night he’d picked up a trio of Vault Hunters desperately needing his help. He does not regret having done so.

“It’s okay.” Ravs’ voice rumbles in his ear, deep and reassuring. Nilesy feels tears that leak out in the next second, running down his face. He can’t explain the complex conflict playing out inside of him, emotions being battered about like a rowboat atop a turbulent ocean, set to capsize with the next giant wave.

He reaches up with both hands, hanging onto Ravs, fingers clutching at the back of his vest and lets himself do something he had never been able to do upon returning home from every visit to the doctor: cry.

Not because of the pain but at how useless, pitiful and helpless he'd felt. Cursing at his pathetic inability to take a human life, his weak body, the inability to stand up for himself, and whatever else he'd felt like swearing at, at the time.

He is so tired of being alone.

Nobody bothered listening to a reclusive hotel owner who was subjected to beatings in order to to make a living off riff-raff passing through the area. 

Even if he’d lived in this town for years, he’s secluded from the other townsfolk by a invisible wall with bricks constructed of apathetic indifference glued together with a paste crafted of resignation (things just don’t change that _simply_ and _easily_ ).

Faced with the harsh realities of living on Pandora that included a pattern of violence that occasionally swept through the town like a dust storm, the small town of Oasis resigned themselves to ignoring the plight of one man. 

A single life for theirs. A fair price, no? He’d understand. In return, he ignored theirs as much as possible.

Skipped out on weekly town meetings, rarely voted or contributed unless it’s deemed mandatory, no friends or acquaintances to speak of, never showed his face until all the bruises and scratches had healed over and he could slide his poker face on. Only ever talked when he had to and only when dispensing the weekly rations of water. 

Little, deliberate actions intended to maintain his side of the wall, just as much as they maintained theirs.

He could have upped and left anytime, sought a better life elsewhere (oh, how much he’d wanted to say ‘ _yes_ ’ to Ravs when he had offered to take him along but deep down, Nilesy knows that he’s not cut out to live out the life that Ravs has).

The only tethers anchoring him to Oasis is that this place is his only source of stable income and he’s the only person who knows how to get water imported around these parts; he’s not that selfish as to abandon fifty or so people on a spiteful whim. Even if he gets beaten up in their place.

Speaking of which, _they_ hadn't been able to resist Ravs’ charm, falling for it, hook, line and sinker. Nilesy hadn’t liked that at all. He does not know that Ravs kept them at an arm’s length, not understanding why they chose to step around Nilesy, rarely including him in gatherings, as if Nilesy is bad luck.

For ignoring one man's plight for the apparent good of Oasis, they will _pay_ , Ravs silently vows there and then. There are other ways to pay aside from causing bloodshed.

Nilesy is still crying, every single pent up bit of emotion he’d bottled up long ago pouring out of him. He cries in silence, not even daring to sniff, hiccup and sob (what impressive willpower he possesses, Ravs can’t help but note). 

His tears follow the curve of Ravs’ upper arm from where they fall down from his face; he clings to Ravs like a man who’d finally found dry land after being adrift for so long, with no company but his own to keep him afloat all this time. 

Ravs gives him as much time as he needs. 

He is only sorry that he hadn’t been aware of it sooner, honestly surprised that Nilesy is still alive despite having gone through so much; did they (the fuckers responsible) intentionally pick on him over and over again, knowing that he wouldn’t fight back or turn them in? 

He’ll have to do some investigating of his own to get to the bottom of this. Certainly, he’ll have to chat to the mayor about it. That’ll be fun.

At last, Nilesy sniffs. “I think I’m okay now,” He whispers, his voice in tiny pieces (pieces that’d come back together, in their own time).

Ravs doesn’t question that, letting Nilesy go. They step away from each other. Nilesy looks so small, a fragile figure that he feels obliged to take under his wing (one more wouldn’t hurt). 

From a pocket of his cargo shorts, Nilesy pulls out a child’s handkerchief (patterned with mice running all over it, faded with time, fraying at the edges) to wipe his face, eyes and to blow his nose. He stashes the handkerchief away, his hands finding each other.

What follows in the wake of that storm is calmness. It won’t last for long but Nilesy will take what he can get. Now, he feels that it’s his duty to explain why hadn’t wanted those seventy dollars. He owes Ravs that much.

“I’m just not used to being tipped that much,” Nilesy quietly admits. “A hundred dollars is a _lot_ of money in these parts.” Let Ravs work out the implications on his own, he doesn’t want to say any more than that, knowing that Ravs could be ridiculously astute when he wanted to be.

“I know exactly what it’s like,” Ravs says. Nilesy’s heart gives a small, painful twinge (he is still sounds so concerned, after he’d stopped crying).

“I thought Vault Hunters were well off…” Now it’s his turn to be taken aback.

“Nilesy,” Ravs says (his name rolls off Ravs’ tongue like they’d known each other for years, rather than just a week), “Even Vault Hunters have to make a living somehow.” He gives a small, sheepish laugh, more to fill in the pause than to make a point. “Most of the time, we barely have enough to afford rations by the week, let alone splurge on nice things like clothes, ammo and other supplies.”

“Is that Rythian was worried about your kilt, even if you weren’t?” Nilesy’s eyes automatically drift to the kilt Ravs is wearing, the slightest bit afraid of what his attention’s been drawn to. “You literally can’t afford new clothes.”

“Not unless we get lucky with a job _and_ there’s enough left over after we split up the pay.” The pained look on Ravs’ face tells Nilesy that he’s just hit the nail on the head, slamming it straight through the board and out the other side.

“Why did you tip me so much then, if you barely had enough for yourself?” It’s a question he’s been wanting to ask and for it to be out in the open like this is cathartic.

“Because I _wanted_ to and I know how much of a difference it can make.” 

There’s a comfortable silence as Nilesy digests his explanation. He knows that Ravs is telling the truth, not wanting to think of the alternatives (like setting him up for a future shakedown, is scamming him or anything of that sort) because he trusts him.

“Give me your stained kilt,” Nilesy demands, holding a hand out for it and lifting his head up to look at him straight in the eye. He knows he doesn’t look that imposing what with his puffy red eyes, tear-stained cheeks and a tremor to his hand but the look in his eyes is unmistakable.

“Oh? I didn’t think you’d be so upfront,” Ravs coyly says, raising an eyebrow at him.

“It’s not because I want to see you naked, okay?” He jiggles his hand impatiently. “I’m going to wash it for you,” He explains. “It’s the least I can do. I’m not going to charge you for it either.”

“Hold on, I got to take it off first.”

“You’re actually wearing it right _now_?” Nilesy is inclined to disbelieve but his eyes had spotted it a couple of minutes ago: a barely noticeable, darker stain on one side, blending in with the red tartan of the fabric, invisible unless one knew what to look for.

“I just didn’t want to get my only other clean kilt dirty just yet!” Ravs points out. Nilesy turns his back on him to allow him privacy, hearing the rustle of cloth and jangle of metal after.

“Just put on some fucking pants, will you?” Nilesy says, shaking his head. “Unbelievable.”

“I’m done, you can turn around now,” Ravs announces once he’s done pulling on his spare kilt. Nilesy reaches out to take the folded up, stained kilt from him. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Nilesy replies. There’s the sense that they’re both moving on from that issue, which has drawn to a close They both know he’ll keep the money. 

Huh, this is first time he’s ever had to wash blood out of a kilt. Now, what did his mother tell him about how to deal with that…

\--

While Nilesy is cleaning up the room that the Vault Hunters had been borrowing (they’d finally left town only ten minutes ago as Ravs’ recovery is complete), a purple scarf tumbles out of the sheets he pulls off the bed. He doesn’t own a purple scarf but he has an excellent idea of who it belongs to. He picks it up.

Once he’s back downstairs in the laundry room, he tosses it into the washing machine along with everything else he’d stripped from the bed. While it’s been left it to dry, he’ll ECHO Rythian to see if he can get him to return for it.

As he’s punching in the settings for the wash cycles, letting the machine clunk into life, there are distant popping sounds coming from...the town’s plaza? Nilesy raises his head, tilting it. He’s not aware of it being a holiday, since Oasis is in the middle of the slower seasons where tourists are few and far in between. It dawns on him that those sounds are awfully familiar, like _gunshots_. 

He forgets about the laundry, barging out of his front door, feet slapping the pavement as he rushes towards the plaza to see what’s the matter. He slides to a stop a few centimetres away from a corner, crouching and peering around it.

 _Pirates_. 

The owner of the general store is splayed out on their back on the ground near the fountain, a red puddle underneath them wetting the cobblestones. The pirate that’d shot them plants a mud-stained boot on top of the body’s chest, pressing down hard. Nilesy can’t help but wince from imagining the snap of bone.

“Where’s your water and booze?” The ringleader sneers at the rest of the townsfolk cowering in front of them. When nobody answers, they raise their pistol high into the air and pull the trigger. The shot echoes through the plaza, reverberating through the alleys and over to where Nilesy is hiding.

He flinches but still remains hidden.

“Ask Nilesy, he’s in charge of the water rationing and booze!” Some traitorous sod cries out in fear from the back of the crowd, wanting to be spared the same fate as the dead shopkeeper. 

Nilesy mulls over the possibility of having very strong words with them later; that’s if he survives this, of course. Time to dismantle that wall between him and the townsfolk, one brick at a time, even if he has to get a hammer and swing away at it until he can't swing anymore. Fuck them.

“Alright, where’s he live then?” The ringleader demands, reloading their pistol, ejecting the empty round that pings when it hits the ground and rolls away, forgotten.

“Red building at the back of town, the one marked ‘hotel’!” The traitor unhelpfully supplies once more. The pirate raises their hand to survey them with red-rimmed eyes. “Just don’t shoot anyone else!” The traitor pleads, mistaking the gesture as one of violence.

“Nobody move and nobody’s getting shot.” To some of the pirates guarding the crowd, the leader says with quiet menace, “Some of you lot go and fetch this Nilesy character we can have a nice _chat_ about who murdered my brother and stole all his shit.”

It must be a testament as to how much the townsfolk like Ravs since even the traitor doesn’t volunteer that information on the spot. 

Several of the pirates break away and start to stride towards the corner he’s hiding behind. Somehow, Nilesy manages to move, darting towards his hotel’s front door, ducking in like there are ravenous stalkers right on his heels.

He remembers to snatch the keys to the water shed off the counter, shoving them into his digistruct modules. He thinks of where to hide (trying desperately not to get caught on what will happen if he gets caught). 

Almost every space in his hotel is being used up in some practical manner, except for a gap that he can barely fit in that’s just behind the washing machine.

Unable to think of anywhere else suitable and knowing that time is ticking, he enters the laundry room, closing the door behind him and gets on his hands and knees, managing to crawl into the gap behind the washing machine and huddle there.

A few seconds later, he hears someone slamming his hotel’s front door open. He instantly goes still. Drawing his knees up to his chest, he tries not to breathe too loudly, even if the washing machine provides some cover with how loud it’s rumbling away, blissfully ignorant of current events.

Footsteps leisurely plod through his hotel’s lobby (he’s only mildly irritated that they'll trek dirt all over his pristine carpet that he’d just swept, not bothering to wipe their feet on the welcome mat). The footsteps split off into three directions to go comb through his hotel.

Nilesy’s glad he emptied out his cash register earlier as part of his morning and evening routines. Ravs' generous tip and all the money he’d made so far is with him as a result of that initiative. _Initiative_. He’s not alone anymore, Ravs had made that much clear when departing.

He slides his ECHO device out of his digistruct module, trying not to fumble or drop it, lest a single foreign noise give him away. He succeeds and dials Ravs, waiting with bated breath (hoping, not praying, praying’s never done him any good).

“Nilesy?” Ravs sounds genuinely glad to hear from him, even if they’d just seen each other in person ten minutes ago.

“Ravs, Rythian forgot his scarf at my hotel,” Nilesy whispers, a trace of fear in his voice.

“So that’s where it went! He’s been driving me and Teep mad with interrogating us since he thinks one of us stole it from him while he was asleep, the fucking nerve…” Ravs stops absently rambling to finally sound concerned, “Why are you whispering?”

“I need help-” Nilesy starts.

“Found him!” A voice above him shouts, triumphant. Nilesy starts, his ECHO device tumbling out his hand, clattering to the floor as a hand roughly latches onto his arm and drags him out from behind the washing machine. The barrel of a gun presses up and into his chin, digging painfully into his jaw. “No funny business, you tricky little shit,” The pirate growls, their face dangerously close to his own.

Nilesy hastily nods. The grip on his arm tightens a fraction. The pirate's rancid breath is making Nilesy’s eyes water behind his glasses. The other two pirates drift into the room. 

“You got the keys to the water shed?” One of the other pirates crudely asks, chewing on a bit of tobacco. A small voice in the back of Nilesy’s mind hopes that they won’t spit in his hotel.

More importantly, he doesn’t dare deny that he has the keys, he’s so scared of being shot, scared of dying. Beatings, he can deal with but being shot? Nope. It’d taken all his will to not faint at the sight of all that blood staining the cloth that Rythian had pressed against Ravs’ side on the skiff ride to Oasis.

The gun under his jaw presses up harder as a reminder of what’ll happen if he doesn’t answer.

“We know you got the keys since we couldn’t find them anywhere, so don’t even try to pretend you don’t have them.”

He nods. There’s no point in resisting. He’d like to stay alive a little while longer (make that as long as he can).

“Unlock the shed and maybe you’ll walk out of this alive.” 

Now threats, he’s familiar with. There is absolutely no way in hell that he’s going to survive this. Once that shed is open, he is going to die. It’s not a thought that pleases him. At the very least, they should fulfill his last wish: let him pet a cat. 

Unless they’re fucking plebs without a scrap of honor. It’s pirates they’re talking about here, so he doesn’t expect much in the way of last requests. Still, the thought of a cat gives him strength.

The gun against his jaw moves to his chest, jabbing him sharply in the ribs. He sharply inhales at the twinge of pain, which appears to amuse the pirates, their faces splitting into sadistic, mostly toothless grins. 

He suppresses the urge to wrinkle his nose at the sight of improper dental hygiene, letting them march him out of his hotel and out the back door, his hands hanging loosely by his sides.

The four of them step around the pool. The pirate chewing the tobacco moves to spit it out into the pool but Nilesy notes with some small bit of petty satisfaction that the shield in place stops that, the brown glob splattering harmlessly against it. The pirate frowns at that foiled attempt, glaring at him. 

Nilesy immediately averts his gaze to stare straight ahead.

Yes, he knows what they’re thinking: why on earth would he have a shield in place around a pool? Too bad they don’t seem interested, he’s more than happy to sit down and explain the merits of that (also, it’d buy him even more time).

They stop in front of the water shed’s door. The gun is now pointed right at the back of his head. He doesn’t have to turn around to know that it’s there, ready to fire if he doesn’t do what they want. He raises one hand to his digistruct module, flexing his fingers and digistructing the ring of keys into his hand.

He lifts them to his face, pretending to scrutinize them for the right one. One of the pirates makes an impatient sound, shifting on the spot, idly spinning their pistol over and over in one hand. Nilesy deliberately fumbles the keys, letting them drop to the ground. 

“Whoops,” He mutters. 

He is promptly kicked in the back of his legs with a grimy boot, sending him falling forwards, right onto his knees. Sharp pebbles scratch into his knees, along with the sting of dirt entering the tiny cuts there. Still, he remains silent, even if he has to bite the inside of his cheek to not let a pained gasp escape (like all the other times, any sounds he makes only encourages them).

“Hurry up, we don’t got all day!” The pirate holding the gun groans.

“Actually, we do,” corrects the third pirate, stowing their gun away. “Mitch cleared his schedule for this.”

“Did I ask for your fucking opinion? No? Then _shut the fuck up_.” There’s the sound of a minor scuffle breaking out from behind Nilesy.

Nilesy gets to his feet, his hands now stained with dirt. He bends down to scoop the keys back up, only to kick them so that they slide under the gap in the door beyond anyone’s reach. The keys jingle as they come to a stop somewhere in the shed. 

The pirates stop squabbling, their gazes drifting to him, to the vacant spot on the ground where the keys had been, then to the shed.

“You little-” The most aggressive pirate roughly shoves their friend away, lifting their gun to fire it into Nilesy’s chest. 

The pirate vanishes into thin air. The hairs on the back of Nilesy’s head are standing on end. _What?_ The remaining two pirates round on him, spawning guns to finish what their now missing friend had started. 

Nilesy takes a step back, preparing to meet his end, this is how he dies: catless but not friendless and he’d done what he’d could to spare the town a little while longer. At least Ravs will mourn his death, seeming like the type to do that. 

Maybe he’ll even have a little gravestone that doesn’t make out his life to be so worthless, after all.

A dark shadow from above crashes into one of the pirates, wrestling them to the ground. The pirate shrieks curses, scrabbling against the figure doing their best to stop them from shooting Nilesy. The remaining pirate turns from Nilesy to aim their gun on the figure who’d crashed into their friend.

A shot rings out. The pirate shudders once before they fall to the ground, blank eyes staring up into the sky, the gun in their hand clattering to the ground. They twitch as their life bleeds out of them through the hole in the side of their head.

Ravs snaps his pirate’s neck, dropping their head out of his hands, dusting himself off as he rises. A harried looking and scarfless Rythian pops into view, his mouth set into an annoyed line. Ravs rushes over to Nilesy, taking in his bloody knees, the impression of a barrel on his jaw and whatever is out of place on him.

“Nilesy, I hope we weren’t too late?” Ravs sounds so worried, looking him over (something inside of him straining at its restraints at Nilesy’s state).

“No, you’re just in time,” Nilesy says, now aware that he’d really like to sit down now because he feels like passing out. “Thank you.” As if he knows, Ravs puts an arm around his shoulders to hold him up, gently steering him towards the hotel’s back door.

Rythian vanishes, only to reappear with the keys to the water shed in his hands. He presses them into Nilesy’s hands. Nilesy gratefully nods, closing his fingers around the keys until the circular bit of metal is digging into his palms. He’d never expected to see the keys or any of them alive. The word ‘relief’ doesn’t quite do itself justice.

“Thank us after we get rid of these fuckers,” Ravs lightly says (how can he be so calm at a time like this; he’s not, he knows that if he’d looked truly angry, Nilesy would have instantly fled his side).

“Don’t let them kill anyone else,” Nilesy whispers. 

It’s not quite a plea though it very well could have been one. He sinks into one of the kitchen chairs. Another few seconds and his legs would buckled out from underneath him. The skin on his knees hurt. Ravs makes sure he’s fully seated before moving to the sink, grabbing a cloth and wetting it.

“We won’t,” Rythian says from where he’s standing in the doorway, keeping an eye out for any approaching threats. His eyes flash when he’s angry, Nilesy notices. Not like Ravs. Ravs wears his heart on his sleeve while Rythian tries his best to smother it like it might burn him. Or give him away.

“In fact, we’ll make sure they’ll never bother you again.” Ravs returns to crouch and dab at his knees, wiping away most of the dirt there with enormous care. 

Nilesy flinches from the pain that arises. Nevertheless, he takes the cloth when Ravs offers it to him, wiping his own knees. He’s capable of doing that much, at least. He’s still hanging onto the keys with one hand, not daring to let go of them yet.

There’s the sound of the tap running, which then stops. A moment later, Ravs hands him a glass of water. When Nilesy doesn’t take the glass, Ravs’ fingers hover over the keys in his hand, silently asking for permission. He nods, fingers relaxing.

The keys are moved from his hand to the table, well within his sight. His hands are manipulated so his fingers curl around the cold glass, Ravs’ own hands wrapping around Nilesy’s own until he can hold the glass without dropping it.

“Stay here, we’ll be back soon.” There’s a promise in his words that Nilesy will hold him to. 

Ravs taps Rythian on the shoulder. Together, the two leave via the back door. Somewhere, in the hills behind Oasis that overlook the entire town, the crack of a sniper rifle rings out.

Nilesy closes his eyes, listening to the distant sounds of the Vault Hunters waging war against the pirates. The water he drinks sears an icy trail down his throat, pooling around the lump of shock in his gut. It does nothing to ease his soul-deep terror of having come so close to death.

When he remembers the feel of smooth, well worn leather and the comforting warmth of Ravs’ large, gentle hands wrapping around his own, the terror doesn’t seem so frightening anymore.

He waits.

\--

“Where’s my scarf?” Rythian asks him. Oh, _shit_ , he’d completely forgotten he’d left it in the wash and hadn’t taken it out to dry before well, everything had happened. Nilesy starts laughing hysterically, earning an offended look from him.

“I’m so sorry, Rythian, but it’s still in the wash,” Nilesy wheezes in between gasps for air. “I’ll go and dry it out now.”

“ _Please_ ,” Rythian says, dryly, deadeyeing him. He gives a slight shake of his head as Nilesy stumbles towards the doorway, chuckling the entire time. 

For Nilesy have to have swept it under the carpet and act as he usually did is concerning. Rythian knows that he’s still shaken up by the entire ordeal and is only hiding how slowly he’s coming to grips with it. 

He knows exactly what’s it like. 

It’s hard, bound to be painful when it shouldn’t be and there are times where he’ll think he can’t do it. There’ll be flashbacks that leave him short of breath and vivid, looping nightmares catapulting him into the past, that’ll leave him sitting up in a cold sweat, fearing that his bedroom door isn’t locked despite the three bolts having been solidly drawn into place.

There will be times where he’ll be crying himself to sleep or waking up in tears, hating himself either way for not being strong enough. Some nights will be sleepless and devoid of hope. Other nights will be calm and tranquil and he will feel like he can nod off and dream sweet dreams; those are rare at first, but it gets easier, with time.

There is nothing but time ahead of him, to work with it and around it. Nilesy also has the support of friends who understand and know what it’s like. Ravs firmly believes that Nilesy can and will eventually get back on his feet. Rythian believes as well. Teep does too. 

Nilesy will never recover (when have any of them ever have?) but he will _live_.

In the hallway, Nilesy passes Ravs, who’s bearing several boxes of supplies in his arms. “Do you need help carrying those-”

“Nope, I’m fine here!” Ravs somehow dodges his attempt to help in the narrow hallway, moving to deposit them onto the kitchen table. “Rythian, come and help me sort out what we need to take with us.” Teep appears, also carrying two boxes that are dumped unceremoniously alongside the others. “Hey, be a little more gentle with those!”

Rythian gingerly pries open the one closest to him. “That is a lot of...food, ammo and water,” He says, sounding surprised. “Where and how did you get all of this?”

“Townsfolk were feeling generous,” Ravs easily says. “We can’t take _everything_ , so we need to leave some behind…” He lowers his voice to a whisper, “for Nilesy.”

Rythian and Teep nod, unpacking the boxes as they start to sort through the contents of each box. In the laundry room, Nilesy whistles a tune to himself as he pins up Rythian’s scarf, not knowing the surprise awaiting him in the kitchen.

It doesn’t quite make up for the fact that they can’t stay in town to watch over him, no matter how much Ravs wants to. The townsfolk are certainly warier of him after watching him take out the pirates, now keeping their distance. 

Former bandit, indeed.

\--

The rattling sound of a Stingray pulling up out front of his hotel prompts Nilesy to leave his counter and peer through the smudged window. He spies a familiar person in their dusty, cream colored shirt with bold black letters denoting ‘MAIL’ emblazoned on one sleeve turn off the Stingray with a rattling sound. Scuffed hiking boots hit the ground as they climb off the hoverbike.

They lean over, reaching down into one of the equally dust covered canvas bags slung over the sides of the Stingray, fishing around in it for a good minute or so. Nilesy opens the door, the hot air of Oasis wafting past him and gently ruffling his hair.

The mailman squints at the bundle of letters he’s holding before deftly plucking one out and holding it out to him. “Good day to you, Nilesy,” He cheerfully says. “It’s not often you get mail,” He adds, gesturing to the postcard Nilesy’s just taken with an expression of mild surprise.

“Yeah, I know. Nobody to write to.” Nilesy feigns pulling a sad face but is secretly delighted at getting mail that aren’t bills, notices, junk or bad news. The card goes into his inventory, much to the mailman’s mild disappointment.

“Hey, maybe it’s a secret admirer.” The mailman idly scratches at his fringe of dark brown hair that’s currently plastered to his forehead with sweat. “Anyway, enjoy your post.”

“I will. Hold on, let me get you a glass of water, you look thirsty as hell.” Nilesy vanishes into the depths of his hotel, leaving his front door askew.

“That’d be great, since I’m always thirsty out on this job.” The mailman rests against the Stingray, fanning a hand in front of his face. He’ll never get used to the heat that plagues Oasis. Even the Dust is cooler, on a good day. At least he’s not stuck with the shift going through bandit territory; those are always hellish, regardless of weather.

Nilesy returns with a plastic bottle instead of a glass. He carelessly tosses it to him. “For you, since I know you’re always on the go.”

The mailman lets out an appreciative sigh after cracking the bottle open and downing half of it in steady gulps. “Hey, maybe I’m your secret admirer, because you always know how to treat a mailman right!”

“As if, your pick-up lines date from last century.” Nilesy lets out an amused snort after. “You should get going before I charge you premium for that bottle of water or take it back.”

“No way, it’s mine now!” The mailman zealously stows the bottle of water into his inventory. “‘sides, I just drank from it and I doubt you want to share my cooties by reselling it.” They shove the rest of the mail back into the canvas bag, zipping it shut and folding the flap down over it, getting back onto the Stingray.

“See you around.”

“Oh yeah, if you want to write back, I’ll swing by Oasis again in another week, so hang onto your love letter until then. Cheers!” The mailman starts the Stingray with a rumble of engines, the fans whirring into life and kicking up a miniature storm of dust.

Stepping back so he doesn't get covered in dust, Nilesy rolls his eyes, sending the mailman off with a friendly wave as the Stingray takes off back up the hill towards the highway. 

He closes the door of his hotel to let the cool air build itself back up against the heat that’d sneaked in. The postcard is spawned into his hands; he hadn’t wanted the mailman to stickybeak at who’d written to him.

It’s one of Oasis’ famous postcards. Ravs must have bought it before he’d left town. The white of the card has since become a faded yellow color.

The front of the postcard is a daytime, picturesque shot of the town with its iconic phallic shaped and stranded ship held in place by various cables and anchors. Cliffs rise along the back of the town, palm trees dotting the blue skyline along with the town’s buildings. The ‘Welcome to Oasis’ sign is turned off but its message is clear, inviting would-be tourists in.

He flips the card to see what’s on the other side. There’s a stamp (that’s almost falling off) glued in one corner above his address that’d been hastily scrawled in unfamiliar handwriting. He lets his eyes travel over to the left hand side of the postcard where the party’s really at.

> Nilesy, 
> 
> Been on the road for about a week now. I ran into this nice lad who agreed to take this postcard to you on the condition I give him my last bottle of rakk ale. Bastard. This had better reach you or I’m going to track down that lad and have some very strong words with him about getting mail to people. That’s enough about that.
> 
> How’s the town treating you these days? Better, I hope. If not, you give me a shout and I’ll set them straight again. Don’t be shy about asking for help anytime, you hear? Sadly, I’m no closer to finding a place to settle down in; Rythian keeps taking us off-road to check out some old ruins that bore me and Teep, so he just goes off on his own and we wait in the technical.
> 
> As it turns out, Teep does not like being bored and I don’t like being bored, so we just take the technical for a joy ride. We always make sure to be back before Rythian returns from his poking around of stuffy ruins. I’m running out of space, so I’ll save the proper chit-chat for when I visit you again. I know you can’t wait ;) .
> 
> Looking forward to seeing you again,  
>  Ravs

There’s just enough room left at the bottom for Ravs’ almost indecipherable scrawl of a signature to finish off the postcard.

Nilesy can’t help but smile. He’s unable to resist reading the postcard three more times in a row. It’s the first of many postcards Ravs sends to him over the course of their friendship. He carefully tucks it into his inventory, definitely sharing the same sentiment about another visit. 

Maybe someday once Ravs has settled down, he’ll go and visit him instead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we’re two thirds of the way there to finishing this btb fic. ‘tlvh’ is on a bit of a break until this fic is done. even then, i’m considering on starting another btb fic; i’m still kicking around a few ideas for what i want to work on next. you can check those out at the very bottom of the [plots page](http://borderlandscast.tumblr.com/plots), over on the tumblr.
> 
> nilesy was pretty close to that when rythian, ravs and teep rolled into his town. the effects of their stay are still being felt, even in ‘tlvh’ which takes place many years later. this is why you see nilesy not responding so well to being shot at or having someone raise their hand in front of him; there is absolutely nothing wrong with him wanting to go and hide in a situation where he feels unsafe, rather than standing up and fight and possibly die.
> 
> the good news is that he gets a little better by the time ‘tlvh’ rolls around. having ravs swing by oasis several times a month tends to deter 99% of people from picking on him. why yes, ravs is the 1%. people have different ways of coping. nilesy’s obsession with cats sort of stems from cultivating a happy, safe, place of his own on a place like pandora. also, he genuinely adores cats and wants to share that with everyone.
> 
> ravs understands where nilesy is coming from, which is why he’s so supportive of him rather than choosing to be judgemental and hating nilesy for why he reacts in certain ways that puzzle him.
> 
> ravs can be astoundingly perceptive when he wants to be. if he chooses to ignore something, it’s more likely that he’s aware of it and has made a conscious decision about not bringing it up. it’s rare that he’s not aware since you know, people aren’t always perfect. he is also acutely aware of his own issues and how difficult they are to resolve. instead, he chooses to put others and their problems first, more so than his own since they’re easier to solve. which is sort of how he got shot in the first place.
> 
> there’s also nothing wrong with that. rythian and teep do worry about that selfless tendency of his, more than they initially let on. these reasons are also why nilesy, rythian and teep react so badly to anybody who picks a fight with ravs; nilesy choosing to get angry on his behalf when turps chose to cheat on something that’s precious to ravs is the equivalent of throwing a gauntlet down. 
> 
> while nilesy may be a pacifist and skittish in regards to his own welfare, nothing’s stopping him from standing up on someone else’s behalf. ravs did the same for him in this fic, so he wants to repay that several times over, even if he’s risking his own neck in the process. i hope i’ve managed to showcase why nilesy and ravs get along so well as a result of this fic; the two have a lot of history between them. this fic is just how everything began.
> 
> thank you for reading this ramble and as usual, for reading the fic; the doodles for this fic can be found over in the tag [here](http://borderlandscast.tumblr.com/tagged/beyond-the-borderlands%3A-how-to-influence-bandits-and-befriend-them), as usual, drawn by the always, amazing siins.


	3. step three (optional): the art of burning bridges with your bandit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> sjin is a man who gets everything he could possibly need. that is, until he begins a business partnership with the charming bandit lord, daltos, who is everything sjin desires. a dark, sexy and action-packed pursuit of the heart ensues-- will sjin succeed in claiming the bandit’s heart or will he fail in getting the one thing he truly wants?
> 
> disclaimer: this is what is going through sjin’s head. 
> 
> the reality is a lot less glamorous. it includes several attempts of murder, explosions, bullets and blood. oh yes, and bandits being bandits. take all of those things that were just listed and you have what daltos usually expects in a normal day.
> 
> needless to say, substitute all those with a single echo call and his life pretty much goes downhill.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> guns and the use of violence are abound in this chapter (given precisely who we’re dealing with here but that shouldn't surprise anybody at this point). there’s also psychological manipulation which is a recurring event in this chapter, plus a dicey moment with a revolver later on during a game of russian roulette. there is also a nasty moment with psycho-related gore. as always, please take care while reading.
> 
> it’s worth noting that this chapter was a work in progress for two to three months. the events that occurred in april regarding real life events with the yogscast happened to coincide with this month’s release of this fic. the stuff written in this fic was not intended to mirror real life events in any way, shape or form.
> 
> this fic was supposed to go out on the last day of april but due to the word count, it took longer than i expected to edit. thank you for being incredibly patient and apologies for the delay. there will be an update in may but it’ll be for a different ‘btb’ fic! 
> 
> the majority of this chapter takes place over several months. these events take place prior to chapter seven of ‘tlvh’. there are some moments where we do go way back before it all began, particularly to explore how sipsco. came to be.
> 
> if you haven’t read the other two chapters of this fic, you can do that on the tumblr tag or ao3! given the length of this chapter (~60,000 words), i’m not cutting this chapter into pieces and posting it to tumblr, so it’s only going to be available on ao3.

Daltos always starts his day off by making sure that it’s just him in his room. He does this by letting his awareness expand out from the bed to the rest of the room, his hearing pricked for any sounds that are out of place. The frigate’s been his home for long enough that even the most subtle, unusual sounds glaringly stand out. All he has to do is pay careful attention.

For instance, the creak of that one loose metal panel by the door as a weight shifts on it, the telltale sharp sound of someone holding their breath in anticipation of him sitting up, a boot softly scuffing against the floor as a gun is readied, anything that might give whoever happen to be lurking in his room away.

He’s always a little disappointed when he’s greeted with nothing but the distant hum of the machinery drifting in from the frigate’s air vents that have been cranked open a little so that his room is sufficiently cool.

After the last failed attempt (he’s since lost count) and a month absent of ambushes, he’d have thought his bandits (the ones that really wanted him dead in the most cowardly way possible) would have the guts to try again by now.

Anybody who can successfully take him out in his sleep deserves what he’s currently got going on his life. What does he have going on for him? Let’s see, he’s got a decent chunk of the east coast under his thumb. It's divided into territories supervised by twenty trusted lieutenants who will _not_ tear the place up in any of his absences. 

It’s actually pretty difficult to find competent subordinates these days who aren’t always bloodthirsty, only _when_ they needed to be. He doesn't need them to be loyal, he just needs them to do their job without incurring additional casualties.

There’s also the almost indestructible stronghold that he shares with his gang. Sure, it’s an old Dahl frigate that leaked and dripped constantly whenever it so much as drizzled, but it’s still his home.

At the moment, there’s at least three hundred bandits living in said stronghold, each of them members who’ve earned a solid place in his gang. All of them are his mooks, army, potential target practice and members of his clan. Half of them hate his guts and the other half would happily die for him.

Considering the list of things that could kill him on this planet, living with these odds poses a better outcome than encountering everything else on that list.

He never has to worry about starving or dying of dehydration either; he keeps his own private store of food and water in his room, under lock and key, that could last him for months. If he carefully rationed it out, it’d last him for even longer. He doesn’t eat that much anyway, so that’s never exactly a concern he has to bother with.

Every bandit of his more or less relies on trade with towns, allied gangs, and their own resources to get what they need to survive.

What else? Oh yeah, drop his name within earshot of any east coast gang spoiling for a fight and it’s guaranteed to start an instant war, every single time. He still gets a kick out of that. 

The fastest anybody’s ever risen to the challenge is fifteen minutes. That one fight had lasted about two hours before the other side had surrendered to preserve whatever dignity had been left after most of it had been shredded in the resulting bloodying of noses.

The other perk of Daltos’ ‘job’ is that he gets to wake up and go to sleep whenever he wants. It's useful for vicious hangovers post-campaign celebrations, and for the times he has to stay up late running meetings, figuring out strategies for whatever war he’s waging, threatening whoever he has to threaten to follow plans or else he’ll rip their head off, and doing whatever he needs to do to keep his plans on track.

Unfortunately, the downside of not having a fixed sleeping schedule is that whenever he crashes and eventually wakes up, he feels absolutely shit, no matter how much he sleeps. He rarely dreams (and if he does, they prove inconsequential since his mind never fixates on them long enough to remember exactly what they’d been about, once he opens his eyes).

Today is no exception. No dreams? He can live with that. His room’s clear of threats, so he sits up with a yawn, ever mindful of potential presences hanging outside his door instead. A quick check of his ECHO device (linked to the live security feed) reveals nothing there.

Yay.

As usual, he’s tired in spite of sleeping well; he’d passed out in bed at around dawn and now it’s mid-morning. At least five or so hours have passed. He hasn’t missed much, judging by the bored messages his lieutenants have left on his ECHO.

Still, he lets them play, not paying much attention while hunting for the last of his clean shirts in one of his lockers. That is, until he reaches the last message. It’s spoken in an unfamiliar voice that’s far too smug and self-assured for his liking, every word carefully enunciated and chosen with the utmost of care.

Daltos lifts his head, frowning. He scrunches up the shirt he’d slept in, tossing it into his inventory so it can join everything else he needs to throw into a washing machine (when he has time).

It’s not a case of mistaken identity since the person speaking is definitely addressing him by name, taking pains so that it’s not being mispronounced either, deliberately avoiding any slight or offence with that polite calculation.

Daltos replays the message as he tugs a clean shirt on, closing the locker he’d ransacked before scooping up his jacket from his unmade bed.

“Daltos, my name is Sjin. I'm the current CEO SipsCo., a mining company. I have a deal that I’d like to offer you in person.” There’s a slight beat, the person speaking having paused to let their words sink in before pressing on without being in too much of a hurry. “I’d like to extend an invitation to you for lunch at the site originally known as ‘New Haven’. Even if you’re thinking of saying ‘no’, can you at least hear me out? I’ll be waiting.”

The message stops there, leaving a thoughtful silence in its wake. Coordinates are conveniently attached to the message (a simple courtesy, but one reeking of expectancy, nonetheless).

Daltos’ hand hovers over the button to delete the message before falling away.

More than anything, Sjin’s manner of speaking grates on his nerves. Daltos has met people exactly like Sjin’s kind before and needless to say, they’re a pain in the ass to deal with. On the other hand, there’s really no reason to decline; he has time to kill, also curious as to what a businessman wants with a Bandit Lord.

Well, if he doesn’t like Sjin, he can always shoot him in the head and leave. It’s not like he’s got any problem with getting innocent blood on his hands and hey, meeting him could actually prove interesting.

There’s a deadline of several hours before he has to make a serious decision so he might as well use that time to get some other work done. 

Daltos finishes zipping up his jacket, pulling on his gloves and snatches up both his digistruct modules and his ECHO device up from the bed. He closes the vent to his room before leaving, checking that the door’s actually locked by giving it a single, sharp tug.

The lock’s never been the same after the fifth attempt to kill him. While he doesn’t keep anything of immense value in his room, he’d rather not encounter any nasty surprises when going to nap or sleep. When he’s satisfied by the door holding, he turns and heads straight along the hallway to the bridge, a mere five minute walk away.

His frigate actually has a name (all Dahl warships did). Since the frigate’s not exactly ‘operational’, he feels it’s more respectful to keep its name under wraps for now. The name has long since been scraped off the sides of the frigate so it’d earned a variety of colourful nicknames over the years. To date, his favourite is ‘Blighter’s Nest’.

There’s not a lot of bandits that willingly choose to skulk in the hallways between his room and the bridge. His room is located where the Dahl captains are typically assigned. Out of the original six, four are dead due to him.

They’d all sounded like Sjin. This is what Daltos means when he describes Sjin’s lot as ‘being a pain in the ass to deal with’; they put up an unexpected fight when the time came to get rid of them.

He’s not sorry for having put a bullet through their heads. It’d just made cementing his position as a bandit leader even easier. People found it hard to argue with someone who’d just easily put several bullets through several of his coworkers’ heads without batting an eyelid, simply because their agendas didn’t align.

The last remaining and former captain is still alive. For the moment, they’re out of his reach, so he won’t even bother going after them for now.

One of his lieutenants (one of the more seasoned and rare, sensible Marauders) is waiting for him by the bridge’s entrance, their helmet tucked underneath one of their arms. Arado is taller than him by about a head but they both know who’d win in a brawl. Daltos nods at them as he passes. They fall into step beside him, idly giving him a status report.

Daltos absently listens as he goes around checking the frigate’s status on the monitors, bandits hastily stepping out of his way in order not to risk pissing him off this early in the day. He’s still shrugging off the last of his grogginess to do anything of the sort but they’d rather not take that chance.

The towns they’ve been trading with aren’t happy about being harassed for more supplies for an upcoming campaign, so they’d jacked up the prices of goods in response. Daltos finds it laughable. He’s actually paying them for those supplies in the first place when he could have just taken instead, just to show how generous he is for letting them live.

It’s also kind of cute how they think they can say ‘no’ to him like that in a rather blunt way. Maybe he’d have found it admirable under any other circumstances.

“Make them one last offer and if they don’t take it, well, you know what to do,” He says with a shrug, far more interested in what the monitor has to say about the current state of the frigate’s engines.

Arado nods, understanding. Wreck the town, but don’t harm any of the people or the supplies. Ironically, repairing the town will cost just as much as the supplies, so they’ll have little choice but to fold, needing the money. They've just essentially screwed themselves over. It's not like there's any shortage of towns willing to work with him so one or two being left to die doesn't necessarily bother him.

“Hey, how many of you are here today?” Daltos is referring to the amount of lieutenants presently at the frigate. If he’s right, there’s bound to be a few lounging around at any given time.

“About five of us altogether,” Arado grunts, the scars on their face rippling as they frown. “Why, you want to go somewhere?” They raise a questioning eyebrow at him. 

Daltos straightens up after typing in the coordinates for ‘New Haven’, looking straight at Arado. A bored Arado is looking back at him.

If all of his lieutenants teamed up and put some serious thought into it, they could maybe give him a challenge in regards to butting heads with him over leadership. 

They’ve been with him for years now, so there’s little chance of them backstabbing him at this point. If they are, well, congratulations, and if they think he’s going to be gentle about attempted mutiny and murder in regards to being a former subordinate of his, they clearly don’t know him all that well to begin with.

Nothing in Sjin’s invitation bars an armed escort so that’s why Daltos wants to know which of his lieutenants are hanging around the frigate today. Some of them are going to be less keen on accepting a random invitation out of the blue, while others are more open to the idea (especially if they know there’ll be food involved, the gluttonous fuckers).

The attached coordinates are definitely at ‘New Haven’ or what used to be it. It’s all decimated ruins and dusty rubble, long abandoned by the people who used to live there after some sort of Hyperion raid went down. It’s not exactly the most impressive place to have a picnic but the coordinates are a perfect match.

It’d been a deliberate choice in location for whatever reason, then. The meaning of it is lost on Daltos. He’s still trying to figure out if there’ll be any advantage in taking any of his lieutenants along or if he’s just being needlessly cautious. 

The last thing he needs is all of them wanting to know exactly what’s going on. For an almost illiterate, trigger-happy lot who jumped at the first opportunity to murder an entire town and spent half their time picking idiotic fights with one another (or him), they’re awfully nosy when it came to his business.

It must come with all the free time they have on their hands.

Idleness invited a wandering mind. That, when combined with someone as private as he is, has resulted in walking in on more than one argument about the details of his personal life. He knows it’s useless to try to stamp out the resulting rumors, so he’s mostly resigned to correcting them if they’re just blatantly wrong or wandering into dangerous territory.

“You should take some of us with you,” helpfully supplies Arado, the look in their eyes now wary upon seeing where he intends to go. “New Haven ain’t exactly _safe_. Even if it’s supposedly neutral grounds.”

“You think so?” Daltos watches the flickering monitor cycle through images of New Haven. He takes whatever his lieutenants have to offer in the way of his advice with some seriousness or else he’d have never gotten this far in the first place.

Arado shifts, raising a hand to idly gesture to themself, then at the ceiling. “I got nothing going on and I know Hawker’s being a useless sack of shit upstairs, so I could go and round him up but he’ll bitch about it like he always does.”

“I can deal with the bitching,” Daltos notes. It’s easy enough to deal with. All he has to do is threaten to remove Hawker’s tongue, as always. “That’s two. I need one more.”

“You’re only taking three of us?” Arado throws him an incredulous look. “I thought you wanted to make a lasting impression.” Yes, he gets that it’s hard to do that with only three, not very physically imposing people (by bandit standards) backing him, without it needing to be said out loud.

“Oh, this isn’t a negotiation with bandits,” He corrects. “Some suit-wearing, pencil-pushing fucker wants me to hear out a deal they got, over lunch.”

“Lunch,” Arado flatly says, all the old scars on their face flickering like a billowing flag strung up on a pole. “And you’re actually _going_.”

“Why, you changed your mind about going?” Daltos makes sure that he’s injected some mockery into his own voice. He’s not surprised that Arado’s ducking out, considering their infamous tendency to withdraw at the faintest implication of a trap. Granted, it’s not the best trait to have for a fight but it’s dead useful for contingency planning.

“Yeah, nah, I don’t like the sound of this invite one bit. I’m out.” Arado steps back with a slow shake of their head.

“You can stay here and keep an eye on things, then.” Well, that’s fine by him. There’s a beat of silence as Daltos scans the monitor for the remaining information on New Haven. He brings up the info on everything else on another screen.

“Hey, if you die, can I have your room?” Arado shoots him a shameless grin, showing off both rows of their crooked, yellowing teeth. Daltos wrestles with the impulse to snatch their helmet out from under their arm and slam it onto their head, letting out a soft, annoyed sound instead.

“That depends on if you win the fight over it if I actually die, but that ain’t fucking happening, _Scarface_ , so no.”

“Was worth a shot.” Arado shrugs, not at all disappointed and moves to leave the bridge. “I’ll let Hawker and the others know you’re looking for them.”

“Thanks,” Daltos says, turning to wipe the monitors clean. Now it's time to see if he can round up or corral two more lieutenants into tagging along.

Not even an hour’s passed before the itch to have a smoke is tempting, given that almost half of his lieutenants aren’t that keen on being dragged places if there’s no possibility of a fight going down.

\--

Ultimately, he’s decided to go and see what Sjin wants. Hence, why he’s currently headed up to the roof of the frigate where he knows Hawker (or Hurricane, depending on which twin is present and if they haven’t swapped places in the meantime just to be dicks) is usually hanging out.

In tow are Klemm and Fieseler, a Bruiser and Shock Nomad pair who are always within shouting distance of each other. He can trust these two to keep their mouth shut about where he’s going. Probably. The others? Not so much.

The airlock admits him with a ‘whoosh’, letting in a summer breeze that ruffles his hair and clothes as he steps through. He's standing on a platform where about sixteen Buzzards are parked. Underneath one of them is a pair of legs with tools spread within arm’s reach around them, out-of-tune and merry whistling accompanying their work.

A couple of bandits (who’re part of Hawker and Hurricane’s unit) lounging on the roof turn their heads to watch, sensing an imminent scene. They put down the spraycans they’d been holding, trying not to be obvious about it. The rest barely spare glances, still busy attending to their rides.

Daltos wanders over to said Buzzard. He stops short of the mess of tools. “Hawker,” He calls out. The bandit underneath the Buzzard continues to whistle, oblivious to his presence. He tries again, in a slightly louder and more impatient tone. “Hawker!”

Now they’re just being deliberately ignorant. He knows it’s Hawker working, unless Arado’s pulled a fast one on him and it’s Hurricane currently underneath the Buzzard. Arado knows not to fuck with him though.

Deciding not to call them for the third time, Daltos delivers a swift kick to one of the legs, right on the shin. The bandit underneath gives an indignant shriek of pain, sliding out from underneath to clutch their pained leg with both hands. The wrench they’d been using drops onto the platform with a metallic clang.

“You fucker, I’ll rip your-” They spit out with a matching glare, before realizing who they’re speaking to and sit up, still cradling their leg. Hawker (or Hurricane) instantly drops the venom from their voice. “You know, Daltos, there’s better ways to get my attention than you know, _stomping on my leg_.”

“Well, you didn’t respond, no matter how many times I _called_ you,” Daltos sweetly says, resisting the urge to kick them in the other leg for good measure.

“Can’t blame a guy for getting caught up in repairs,” Hawker (or Hurricane) protests, standing up and gingerly testing out their leg. They spot the other two lieutenants standing by, their gaze sliding from them to Daltos. “Let me guess, you three want a lift somewhere?”

“Why else would I be up _here_?” Daltos sarcastically says.

“I thought so, buuutt it wouldn’t kill you to ask nicely either,” Hawker (or Hurricane) says, nodding. They wipe their grease-stained hands on their jacket, stooping to grab all the tools off the platform and shoving them into their pockets.

“I could always go to Donier and ask him instead for a lift,” Daltos proposes, allowing a thoughtful expression to pass over his face. “He doesn’t need me to ask him so nicely.”

Hawker (or Hurricane) hastily shake their head, stepping forward. “Don’t ask that prick for a lift, his flying sucks!”

Some of the bandits belonging to their unit shout agreement. There’s also the fact that if Daltos ever asked him for anything, Donier would never let Hawker (or Hurricane) hear the end of it with all his endless bragging. 

Behold, the wonders of knowing exactly which one of his lieutenants are having a never-ending pissing contest with one another, and how to take advantage of that.

“So, do I now have to say ‘please’ to get a lift or are you just full of shit?” Daltos trails off with a smug smirk. Hawker (or Hurricane) heave an exasperated sigh, motioning to their bandits to get ready.

“Just fucking get in,” Hawker (or Hurricane) grumble, unwilling to admit any fault on their part. They toss him carabiners (attached to zip lines that trail to the Buzzard’s side) that he catches, clipping two of them to his belt. That done, Daltos takes one of the empty spots on the side of the Buzzard.

Goggles with smudges across the lens are tossed into his lap. He pulls them on, wanting to be able to see a bird-eye’s view of the land as they fly.

A few sharp yanks confirm that the carabiners and zip lines will hold his weight. Even if he won’t die that easily from being thrown off if anything happens, falling from this height has and will always hurt like a bitch.

Satisfied with the barest minimum of safety measures in place, Hawker (or Hurricane) climb into the Buzzard they’d been working on. Daltos nods at Klemm and Fieseler, who move to two of the other Buzzards nearby. Two of Hawker’s (or Hurricane’s) men climb into the Buzzards bearing the other two lieutenants. The rest file into the remaining aircraft scattered around the platform. 

Daltos’ hand wraps around the edge of his seat, his feet finding the brackets jutting out from underneath the Buzzard, bracing the rest of him for take off. 

There’s always the unpleasant, upwards sensation of his stomach being left behind as the Buzzard shoots straight up into the air with a sudden roar of its engines. He doesn’t throw up that easily but fuck, Hawker (or Hurricane, he still hasn’t figured out which twin he’s been talking to) could stand to take off a little more gracefully.

“Where are we going?” Hawker (or Hurricane) cheerfully shout over the wind as they pull down their own goggles. Any previous animosity for being kicked has dissolved upon taking off. “Should have asked you that before takeoff but it’s fine!” 

In response, Daltos forwards the coordinates for New Haven. “Drop us off nearby, not on top of it!” He shouts, as Hawker (fuck it, it’s Hawker piloting for sure since Hurricane has a gentler hand) indelicately swings the Buzzard around, pushing it forward as fast as the engines will allow.

The rest of the Buzzards follow, already falling into a V-shaped formation with him and Hawker in the lead. This is the part that Daltos enjoys most whenever he hitches a ride on these deathtraps. Once his stomach settles, he can actually relax, letting his legs dangle over the edge and look down.

Already, the persistent whine of the Buzzard’s engines are part of the background noise, next to the sound of the wind. They’re flying high enough so that any rival gangs won’t fire on them if they’re spotted, but low enough so that he can see the scenery below them.

The wind up here is cooler than the one blessing the frigate, making him glad that he’d decided to wear his warmer jacket today. The goggles keep his eyes from watering up and the sun’s glare at bay. Hawker could stand to take better care of them; there’s fingerprints and grease smeared all over the lens. At least he can still see out of them.

If he leans out a little, he can make out even more of the scenery passing by underneath them, an unending mass of drab browns broken up in places with hints of green, yellow, red, greys and oranges. The frigate is already a misshapen chunk on the horizon when Daltos looks up, searching for it.

Arado has the run of the place while he’s gone and can actually be trusted to look after it, even if they could stand to be less of a sarcastic prick sometimes. Then again, all of his lieutenants are dicks, to varying degrees. It’s one of the minor reasons why he picked them in the first place.

Hawker thankfully doesn’t grace Daltos with any of the bad whistling from before, far too occupied with keeping the Buzzard on course. The two of them are content to let a comfortable silence reign for the duration of the trip.

\--

Half an hour later, the Buzzard starts to descend. Daltos hangs on, only barely managing to catch a glimpse of New Haven (yep, just a bunch of ruins and rubble; _wait_ , is that a Loader?) before the vehicle lands with a bump that almost bucks him off.

“Another happy landing,” Hawker crows, shoving their goggles up to their forehead and grinning at Daltos. 

He disagrees with Hawker’s optimistic assessment of their landing (too rough for his liking), but is more occupied with the feeling of pins and needles racking his legs from having stayed immobile for so long. Daltos unhooks the carabiners, tossing them aside and standing up to stretch. 

That earns him a crude wolf-whistle from Hawker. Daltos turns around to flip them the bird, earning an unapologetic snicker. His own goggles are pulled down around his neck to rest there for the time being.

The rest of the Buzzards land in the clearing Hawker had chosen, kicking up clouds of dust. Engines power down, leaving a tentative calmness in their wake. What quiet chatter has been going on amongst the bandits are abandoned.

“You three are with me, the rest of you can stay here,” Daltos orders. 

The bandits nod, moving to secure the clearing, guns being drawn, reloaded, readied and hefted up. Klemm and Fieseler plod over to him, armed with their guns. Hawker climbs out of their Buzzard, a rifle of their own being digistructed as they fall behind to take up the rear.

In his HUD, Daltos checks the coordinates. They match it up with ones he’d been sent. They’d landed at the bottom of a slope, the only clear area around to give the Buzzards ample room to land. It’s not a strategy that he likes using, but it’d been the only option at the risk of leaving them entirely open to attack from above if anybody chooses to ambush them. 

He doesn’t think it’s an ambush or a trap of any sort (contrary to what Arado suspects); Sjin had sounded sincere enough in his message. He’d be stupid to try anything, if he knows exactly who he’s dealing with. 

Still, Daltos is still skeptical of his intentions, mulling over what could happen as he climbs the slope to the ruins of New Haven.

“Send up one of the Buzzards on recon. Don’t fire on anything without my command,” He tells Hawker. Hawker relays the order by shouting it over their shoulder. One of the Buzzards rises into the air to hover a safe distance away as the four of them continue climbing.

Daltos blinks at the sight that awaits him once he’s standing on top of the slope. He’s looking over an area cleared of rubble and ruins so that it’s level ground. In the middle is a dark wooden table laden with food, matching chairs neatly arranged on all four sides.

At the far end of the table is a man dressed in a smart blue business suit, yellow Loaders (each sporting tiny waiter bowties) awaiting their orders stand on either side of him. The man spots him and enthusiastically waves, half-rising from his seat to do so.

Even from this distance, he can see the man’s grin. Daltos turns on his heel and starts walking back down the slope. His lieutenants who have stopped to gawk and take in the bizarre scene glance at one another with varying degrees of bewilderment, the three of them hesitating before scrambling to follow his lead.

“Um, Daltos?” He gives no indication of having heard Hawker. “Why did you just take one look and immediately decide to leave?” Rocks slide past them down the slope, under and around their feet.

“Isn’t it obvious?" Daltos scoffs, once he reaches the foot of the slope. “It’s a trap.” The four of them hear someone sliding down the slope, whirling around to confront the newcomer.

“Wait, wait, why are you _leaving_?” It’s Sjin, who windmills his arms to try to keep his balance, sounding miffed at their early departure. “You just got here!” He stumbles once he also winds up at the bottom of the slope as well. He holds up both of his hands when Daltos’ lieutenants train their guns on him, as well as the rest of the bandits. “Oh, you think it’s a _trap_.” He has the gall to let the tiniest smile appear on his face in spite of the threat surrounding him.

“Is it?” Daltos levels an unimpressed look at him. He hasn’t bothered to draw a gun of his own, leaving his hands free to cross over his chest. All it takes is a nod from him and Sjin is dead.

He takes back everything he ever said about it possibly being a trap. Never mind what the businessman wants, he’s got better things to do with his time, such as plan his next lot of moves for the upcoming foray into the west coast.

“No! It’s not,” Sjin emphatically says. “I brought unarmed Loaders and left them behind to come after you myself! And I’m also unarmed!” He brandishes his empty hands like it might help his cause.

“That doesn’t prove anything.” Daltos turns to leave or would have, if Klemm hadn’t spoken up there and then.

“Daltos, I think he’s telling the truth,” He rumbles confidently, leaning over to check Sjin. Sjin tries not to shift on the spot at such a piercing stare coming from an imposing figure.

Daltos turns to survey Klemm with a critical eye. “What makes you say that?”

“Just a hunch, s’all.” Feeling no need to explain further, Klemm nods to indicate he’s finished speaking.

“Hawker, Fieseler, what do you two think?” The abruptness of Daltos’ question causes Hawker to stand up straighter and look bemused. Fieseler just blinks slowly, their angular half-lidded eyes now alert.

“I agree with Klemm,” Fieseler speaks up for the first time, mumbling as they peer at Sjin from under the brim of their hat. “Doesn’t look like he’s up to anything.” They fall silent after, having contributed all that’d been asked of them. Well, Fieseler agrees with Klemm. That’s nothing out of the ordinary.

“If he is, just cap him in the head, take all the food and let’s go!” Hawker enthusiastically contributes. With a mean chuckle, they mime shooting Sjin in the head.

At this, Sjin visibly starts, dropping his smile in favor of a panicked expression. “I assure you, I’m not up to anything!” He insists.

“He’s also not wearing any digistruct modules,” Klemm thoughtfully adds. “Not going to make any direct moves, that’s for sure.”

Looks like it’s a majority vote for not killing Sjin. “Okay then, Sjin, lead the way back up the slope,” Daltos finally says, when Sjin thinks that he’s about to die.

“Gladly, but it’d be nice if you could ask them to…?” Sjin nods at the guns still trained on him, especially avoiding Hawker’s keen and hopeful look.

“Not until we get there and you ask your Loaders to step away,” Daltos tells him in a mocking, cheerful voice that has Hawker and a few others snickering. He uncrosses his arms and moves to stand directly behind Sjin. He’s close enough so that he can put a bullet in his head if he has to but far enough to dive out of the way if anything happens.

“Fair enough,” Sjin lightly replies, starting to walk back up the slope with his hands now by his sides. The bandits left behind return to keeping watch as the five depart up the slope.

Once they're at the top, the Loaders retreat several metres away. Sjin looks over at Daltos to see if that satisfies him. He would have preferred them to be out of sight altogether but this is a fair compromise. 

The three lieutenants stare at the food laden table with longing. Hawker lowers their gun to give Daltos a sideways look of pure jealousy that he ignores.

“Help yourselves to the food too,” Sjin shyly says to them. The three lieutenants blink at Sjin, then glance at Daltos with hope in their eyes. Even the reserved Fieseler has a hungry glint in their eyes.

Well, there's enough chairs and a decent amount of food laid out. Daltos nods, hoping he won't regret letting them eat.

The three sprint towards the table, jostling one another for the closest chair. Daltos follows less eagerly, a part of him still reluctant to remain. On the other hand, it’s too late to have second thoughts, seeing as Sjin is pulling out a chair for him. It’s the chair closest to him, he observes.

He sits down, Sjin taking the remaining seat on his left, beaming the entire time. 

Guns are set aside but remain within grabbing distance. Already, Hawker and Klemm are arguing about something asinine, Fieseler occupied with cutting up their chicken into bite-sized chunks. Hawker steals one piece by jabbing it with the tines of their fork; Fieseler automatically snatches the retreating hand, their fingers tightening around Hawker’s wrist.

Hawker is forced to let go of the fork or risk the circulation in their fingers being cut off. A hum is heard, the telltale sign of Fieseler’s gear starting up; a second later, a blue spark leaps from Fieseler’s hand to Hawker, zapping the latter, who yelps. Satisfied at enough of a warning being given, Fieseler returns to their attention to their plate. Hawker grumbles, rubbing at their wrist before retrieving their fork.

Daltos watches the three of them for any sign of brewing trouble. They don’t notice, far too busy squabbling and eating (somehow managing to doing both at the _same time_ ). Eating with his lieutenants is always a noisy affair.

He still doesn’t touch any of the food, even when it’s clear that the food is edible. When he looks to his left, Sjin is happily helping himself to some of the food, avoiding getting any on his napkin covered lap.

While it’s true that Daltos’ lieutenants are expendable, he’d rather risk not losing any one of them to anything. Hawker especially, but only because he doesn’t particularly want to tell Hurricane their twin died and have to deal with the aftermath.

Sjin offers him a plate with buttery potatoes sprinkled with herbs piled up on it. Regardless of how good it smells and looks, Daltos shakes his head, refusing it. Sjin doesn’t appear to mind his refusal, simply offering it to Hawker instead. Hawker enthusiastically takes the entire plate out of Sjin’s hand with a rushed ‘thanks’. 

At this, Sjin appears to be tickled pink with how well-received his food is. Only when he’s eaten his fill does he speak, turning to look directly at Daltos with a devious glint in his eye. 

Daltos can feel his eyes traveling over the old scar above his left eyebrow, where the two silver bars denoting Dahl military rank had once been (ripped out by his own hand). He coolly stares back, causing Sjin’s smile to grow a touch demure.

“So, my proposal is this: you send some of your bandits to work in the SipsCo. mines and in exchange, I’ll provide funding and supplies for your war campaign.” It sounds like Sjin’s rehearsed it enough times to make it sound casual. Plus, none of the lieutenants are paying attention to them so the offer is for his ears alone.

Daltos says nothing, simply absorbing Sjin’s offer as it is with a neutral expression. “This lunch was just a formality.” Sjin continues on with, “If you’d like to work out the details, ECHO me.”

He reaches into the inside of his jacket to withdraw a business card and holds it out with an expectant air. When Daltos gingerly takes it, Sjin winks and shoots him a grin, pushing away from the table to stand up and stroll off, the Loaders clunking after him.

“Thanks for the grub!” Hawker shouts after him. Sjin just lifts a hand in response, his suited figure vanishing over the crest of the hill. Daltos deadeyes his lieutenant, who raises an eyebrow in response, innocent about any breach in manners for their abhorrent behaviour. “What? It’s good food. Here, have some potatoes.”

Stashing the card away, Daltos takes the plate with half a mind to throw it at Hawker’s head.

He ends up tipping whatever’s leftover into spare containers. Four resulting boxes are up for grabs. Hawker and Klemm each snatch up one. Fieseler takes the last two (using their coat to conceal that they'd taken more than one box, much to the confusion of the other two).

It’s also incredibly tempting to flip the table over, seeing as Sjin just left it behind. Instead, he just lets Klemm call up the rest of the bandits to chop it and the chairs up for firewood.

\--

Later, when Daltos is sprawled out on his bed, he flips the card over and over in his fingers. Bold brown letters in a fancy script are embossed onto the stark white of the card. They spell out the company’s name and owners.

If he flips the card over, there’s a square holographic logo consisting of a single block. The block feels solid despite its brownish, semi-translucent appearance when he runs a chipped fingernail over the top of it.

There could be something under or in there, but he doesn’t care enough to find out, choosing to mull over the deal Sjin had offered.

The offer is tempting. So very tempting.

When is he ever going to get another opportunity like this?

_Fuck it._

The card is shoved into his inventory for the time being.

\--

“I thought you weren’t interested in the deal,” Sjin says, sounding very glad indeed to be hearing from him. There’s a hint of smugness in his voice. The bastard probably is looking as much.

“Why _else_ would I be calling you?” Daltos retorts, not caring if Sjin sees him as rude for being so upfront. 

He’s calling him late in the afternoon, the only time he’s free. The rest of the day had been taken up with attending to other inane shit, plus arguing with Arsenal about their recent quick draw match (which Arsenal won so that means they’re now tied). Overall, he’s not in the best mood right now.

“Oh, there are plenty of other reasons for why you could be calling me-” Sjin begins in a coy tone.

Daltos doesn’t miss a beat, already cutting him off. “Whatever fucked up reason you’re thinking of, that ain’t it.”

“Just business, then? I can work with that.” A message pops up in Daltos’ HUD. “Here’s the Fast Travel Code to Opportunity and a map to the SipsCo. compound. I’ve already given you security clearance. Feel free to come alone or with friends.” The way Sjin is emphasising the last part is irritating.

“They’re not my friends-” Daltos starts to correct but by then, Sjin’s cut the call. “ _Fuck_.” He drops his ECHO device onto the bed, running a hand through his hair. He’s really doing this, then.

A shower and a shave, plus a change of clothes, then it’s off to the southern part of the Dahl Headland where the Fast Travel Station is located. Let’s see if he can let Arado and Arsenal know where he’s going without tipping off the rest of his lieutenants.

Hawker and Hurricane have been dropping not so subtle hints about wanting to go see Sjin about his offer, probably in the hopes of getting more food (and more bragging rights).

Too bad, Daltos is heading out on this trip alone. His map tells him that Opportunity is far beyond his territory by a thousand, maybe more, miles, all the way on the opposite side of Pandora. No wonder why Sjin wants him to use the Fast Travel Network.

It’d take him days to reach Opportunity by air and even longer if he’s traveling via road.

He spends a long time getting ready to leave. It’s not that he’s nervous, but what had Sjin said? Send some bandits to work in his mines and he’ll support whatever war Daltos decides to start. Sjin hadn't gone into any specific details which was a smart move on his part. Never reveal all of one’s playing cards until the time is right.

Daltos has a few of his own ready by the time he’s changed into his last set of clean clothes. Leaving his room locked as usual, he sets off to track down his two most valuable lieutenants.

He finds Arado hanging around Arsenal’s usual haunt, one of the cargo bays filled to the walls with technicals being repaired by crews of bandits. Sounds echo all around the bay, machinery screeching, mingling with the sounds of rise and fall of talk, banter and cursing punctuated by the whine, clang and shriek of tools at work.

With a glance, he easily finds Arsenal tuning up one of the more stubborn technicals near the back. A screwdriver is clamped between his teeth. A rainbow of wires trail from a hand into the side cabin under the turret. He's holding cutters in the other, contemplating the open compartment as to how best proceed without causing the technical to stall.

Arado is leaning against a nearby technical, fingers plucking a piece skag jerky out of its packet every now and then so they can munch on it. The two lieutenants are presently engaged in quiet conversation when Daltos walks up to them. Arsenal puts down the cutters so he can take the other tool out of his mouth.

“Sleep well?” Arsenal greets him with a nod, dumping both onto the hood. He doesn’t look that mad at him for accusing him of cheating earlier. Arado just grunts in greeting while chewing on a tough bit of skag jerky.

“Well enough,” Daltos says, cutting right to the chase. “I’m going somewhere and I don’t know when I’ll be back. Maybe in about three hours.”

Arado swallows the last bit of jerky they’d been chewing on. “Sneaking out without any of us?” They raise both their eyebrows, giving him a mischievous look. “Didn’t think you’d stoop so low.”

“Only to stop Hawker and Hurricane from hounding me about tagging along,” Daltos points out. Seconds earlier, he’d had to duck into an empty room to avoid being double-teamed by the two on their way to the mess hall.

Arado leans over with a sudden, sly grin plastered on their face. “Hey, what’s in it for me if I keep my mouth shut?”

Clearly, they’d heard about the lavish meal the other three lieutenants had been treated to. Daltos is willing to bet that Arado’s kicking themself that they hadn’t gone. Good food that aren't rations, powdered, canned, dried or cured are hard to come by in these parts. Fresh, well-cooked food is coveted by many but is even rarer to come across.

“Well, Scarface, how about no new scars to add to your collection?” Daltos’ hand drifts towards his digistruct modules. It’s more for show, seeing as Arado never enters a fight in which the outcome isn't in their favor.

Arado’s grin vanishes as said scars on their face warp with a frown. They step back. “Calm down, it was just a joke.”

“It didn’t sound like one.”

“No shooting in my cargo bay. I really don't want another repeat of the Greif and technical explosion incident,” Arsenal intervenes, stepping out from behind the technical to peer at Daltos. The wires he’s clutching prevent him from coming any closer, judging by the furtive glance he throws at them after. “If you want to leave, you’d better go now before they catch on.”

There's also the matter of welcoming back the mobile forces who are due to return any day now but he doesn't think they'll arrive today. Arsenal knows, plus Arado. They can deal with it if he’s not here.

“At least someone here isn’t intent on dobbing me in.” Daltos gives Arado a pointed look and adds, “Oh yeah, if I come back to a wrecked frigate, all of you are _dead_.”

“Yeah, yeah, just go already,” Arado grumbles, looking sour that Daltos doesn't have any leftovers to pay them with in exchange for their silence. Arsenal simply shakes his head and picks up another tool to resume repairs. He steals a bit of jerky from Arado’s packet left out on the hood, Arado not minding the theft.

Daltos munches on a ration bar as he climbs into one of the working technicals. One of Arsenal’s mechanics drops into the turret so that they can drive it back once he's reached the Fast Travel Station.

There's no sense in leaving a perfectly good technical behind so that it'll get stolen, wrecked or ransacked. Those are notoriously difficult to make and maintain and every functional one is valuable, so they can't afford to lose any if they could help it.

\--

If he had a choice between catching a ride on a Buzzard with a horrendous amount of turbulence or Fast Travel, he’d pick the former.

The former is infinitely better than having to feel himself being pieced back together by the digistruct system after having been slowly taken apart. Feeling parts of him being eaten up by the machine is a sensation he’ll never get used to.

Since it can’t be helped, Daltos just shrugs off the hunch that he’s missing a few cells and takes his first ever look of Opportunity, business conglomerate as advertised on the ECHOnet. ‘Get your office set up here today!’ flashes at him from a billboard above him. 

According to the map, the SipsCo. building is located all the way at the very back. He’d better start walking then.

To his surprise, there’s people wandering around Opportunity. They’re all better dressed than him and looking distinctly put off that he’s been allowed in, not bothering to hide their spooked stares. There’s no doubt that security is watching his every move as well, judging by the not very inconspicuous cameras posted up high that are rotating to follow him across Opportunity. 

He’s secretly glad he decided to come alone; his lieutenants would have drawn even more attention. Some of them wouldn’t have liked knowing that they were being watched. Yes, it’s clear that he doesn’t belong here nor would he ever want to.

It’s not that hard to miss the SipsCo. building with its giant sign (styled exactly like the business card) shouting its presence across Opportunity. Daltos crosses the bridge at a slow walk, craning his head back to take in the building itself once he's close enough. It’s an ugly, rectangular block with dark blue tinted windows taking up every single inch of its surface where gunmetal grey supports don’t.

Only two sliding doors serve as the entrance and exit, so he heads towards them, the doors sliding apart to admit him. 

The room he steps into is exactly as he’d imagined it to be: minimalist, cool colors, all curves with no sharp angles as if the people who’d designed the room wanted to idiot-proof it, not wanting to risk workers accidentally bruising themselves on any part of it.

Most of all, it’d been designed to impress. Too bad it’s already failed on that front where he’s concerned. Pre-cooled air washes over him from above, courtesy of the ventilation system.

Only one person is in the room with him. They’re occupied with poring over the lined pages of a leather ledger, a fountain pen idly clicking in one of their hands. They glance up with mild disinterest from the lone front desk. A second later, their head snaps up with alarm flooding their features.

The ledger and pen clatter on the desk. Both are forgotten for the time being, their face paling as they stumble out of their chair towards the smooth wall behind them, flattening themselves against it.

Daltos saunters over to lean on their desk. Apparently not having expected him to come any closer, they barely appear to stop themselves from fainting, a fine sheen of sweat now visible on their face, never taking their eyes off him.

“You work here?” He casually asks, glancing down at the ledger in mild curiosity. 

Some sort of timetable in the process of being drafted is scrawled there in blocky, neat handwriting. The person darts out a wary hand to hastily snap the ledger shut before drawing their hand back. Daltos raises an eyebrow, his gaze drifting up to their face. 

“Yes, so h-how may I help you?” They finally ground out, their eyes as wide as they could possibly be behind the thick, smudge-free lens of their black-framed glasses. Being the subject of his bored gaze is causing them a greater amount of visible distress. The neck of their shirt is already soaked.

“Is Sjin here?” He innocently inquires, enjoying this immensely. It’d be worrying if they died of a heart attack so he tries not to look so intimidating, opting to use his friendliest smirk.

The conflicting, pained look that pops up on their face tells him that they’re torn between telling him ‘no’ just so that he’ll go away or ‘yes’, to do their job and not get fired. Daltos is counting on the latter. 

Technically, he could just ECHO Sjin to let him know that he’s here. On the other hand, it’s so difficult to resist the chance to fuck with someone when they make it far too easy.

“H-he is. I’ll let him know you’re here…?” The corner of their mouth twitches as if they’d just managed to stop themselves from adding ‘mister’ onto the end of it, out of habit.

Daltos ia actually glad they hadn’t, having gone this long without any sort of formality tacked onto his name to feel slightly uncomfortable if they had done so. “Daltos,” He offers as a name. That’s bound to get Sjin’s attention, assuming he’s serious about meeting him in person again.

Still watching him with immense wariness, they slowly reach up to their ear in the customary gesture of someone starting a hands-free ECHO call.

“Sir, there’s a... _bandit_ named ‘Daltos’ here to see you.” They say, unable to prevent a look of disdain crossing over their face before they realize Daltos is still watching and wipe their face clean of all emotion. They frown at whatever response Sjin gives them. “Alright.” They drop their hand, their tone bordering on chagrined insolence as they glance back at him. “He’ll be down to see you in about ten minutes.”

While they’d been doing that, Daltos has spotted their nametag (peeking out from behind a miniature potted drakefruit plant) that’d been displaced when they’d dropped their ledger and pen.

“Sherlock, is it?” This causes Sherlock to throw him a glare (well, insert the name of any deity here forbid him from wanting to know his name for future reference), momentarily displacing his fear that returns within a second. “Is that really your name?”

“ _Yes_ , it’s my name,” Sherlock says, the hint of an edge creeping into his voice. “And like you’re one to talk.” He claps a hand over his mouth after that retort, looking horrified for his cheek. “I’m sorry, please don’t shoot me!” His life starts to flash before his eyes. 

Daltos leans forward, one of the digistruct modules on his belt clinking gently against the desk. _Goodbye, cruel world._ Sherlock’s eyes flick to the modules, then back to his face that’s now sporting a neutral expression.

“If you’d been one of my bandits, I’d have broken your nose for that,” He starts in a pleasant, conversational tone, “but you’re not, so I’ll let that slide.” With that, he draws back, the apology accepted.

He’ll have to revise his opinion of Sherlock. Even if Sherlock’s terrified of him, he still has the gall to snark back. Daltos can’t help but admire that.

Sherlock gives an understanding nod, letting out a relieved exhale, his mouth setting into a thin line. He bites his cheek, silently counting down the torturous minutes until Sjin comes down to save him.

“You should sit down, you look a little pale,” Daltos lightly suggests.

After wrestling between ‘coming dangerously close to fainting on the spot’ and ‘not embarrassing himself by actually doing so’, Sherlock resettles in the chair that he’d bolted out of, still keeping well clear of the desk that Daltos is still leaning on.

He’s displeased at following said suggestion. Annoyingly enough, sweat continues trailing down his neck but not as much compared to several minutes ago. Sitting down does alleviate some of the light-headedness, letting him find the strength inside of him to fake being calm. Now if only his hands would stop trembling.

“Been working here long?” Sherlock is unable to prevent another sliver of fear from lodging in his chest. 

“Long enough,” He replies with a quaver in his throat. Only nine more minutes, he can last that long and then he’ll never see the bandit again (or so he hopes, in that Sjin will kick him out once after finding out what a menace he is).

“What do you do?” Is the bandit deliberately trying to _torture_ him with small talk? 

“Paperwork.” Sherlock is still trying his best to ignore the smirk still present on Daltos’ face.

“What does your company do?” _Only seven more minutes to go._

“ _Mining_ ,” Sherlock says, sounding testier with every question. Also, he’s trying desperately not to snark back with every answer he gives. 

He’s already wasted his first strike. Better to not find out if the bandit is actually that forgiving with a second strike. His life‘s already flashed before his eyes once. His delicate psyche can't handle another.

“Are you really that scared of me?” Well, _obviously_.

“Yes,” Sherlock admits without any bit of shame. Every fiber of his being is radiating that so he feels that there’s little point in trying to hide it.

“Why?”

“Because you’ll shoot me!” It seems like the more he’s afraid, the more the bandit looks like he’s enjoying this.

“Relax, I’m not going to shoot you.” Daltos pauses to let that sink into Sherlock's head (assuming he’s listening). “Unless you give me enough of a reason to, I suppose.” The way he says it makes it sound like he quite likes the prospect. That is not, in any way, reassuring to Sherlock.

Before Sherlock can open his mouth to plead for his life, he hears familiar footsteps coming down the stairs a metre away. That instills in him relief that sweeps his fear under the metaphorical carpet.

Sjin smiles at Daltos, looking from him to one ruffled looking Sherlock. Still smirking, Daltos stops leaning on the desk to regard him with mild interest, shifting from one prospective target to another.

“Stop terrorizing my secretary,” Sjin concludes. Sherlock could have thrown himself at him and kissed him for the perfect timing; exactly ten minutes have passed.

“I wasn’t terrorizing you, was I, Sherlock?” Daltos innocently says, giving him the equivalent of a look that promises to make his life a living hell if he tattles to Sjin. 

Sherlock quickly shakes his head. His working life is already hell enough as it is when it’s just him working under Sjin and Sips’ watch without Daltos adding to it.

Already turning to head back up, Sjin nods at Daltos. “Come on up, we’ll talk in my office,” He invites.

“See you around,” Daltos cheerfully says to Sherlock.

Sherlock mutters that something might have sounded like ‘good riddance’, before pretending he hadn't said anything in the form of focusing very intensely on the pages of his ledger.

Daltos follows Sjin up the stairs to whatever floor they’re going to. He’s not even out of breath by the time they reach Sjin’s office which is located on the uppermost floor. Sjin opens the glass door of his office with a flourish, holding the door open to let him in first.

His office is styled in the same modern manner as the lobby with a dash of Sjin’s own additions in the form of personal items scattered here and there. It’s spacious enough for about ten technicals to be parked next to one another without their sides touching, the ceiling high but low enough to feel open and welcoming. The overall effect is not at all claustrophobic and cold like the frigate’s rooms and hallways.

“Nice office,” Daltos dryly says, taking in the view of Opportunity by the waterfront. Water reflects sunlight onto buildings, resulting in a dappling effect on the glass that would have impressed more artistically inclined people.

“Thanks,” Sjin replies, pleased with the compliment (however backhanded it sounds).

“It’s not as nice as my frigate, though,” Daltos adds. “And it clearly shows off how tasteless you are.”

“Hey, it’s got a great view, which is something your frigate probably doesn’t have!” Sjin drifts behind his desk. “And what would a bandit know about interior decorating?” His leather chair squeaks as he takes a seat, calmly watching Daltos the entire time.

“More than you, by the looks of it.”

That doesn't faze Sjin who just continues to smile. “Well, as they say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” Daltos isn't going to bother figuring that one out. “Please, have a seat.” 

Daltos picks one of the chairs, choosing to lean back in it once he’s sat down. The chair’s cushioned, layered in a soft, durable cloth. He squashes the impulse to check if the chair’s legs have those rubbery things under each of them to stop impressions from forming on the carpet. His smirk fades as he steadily regards Sjin.

“Do you want anything to eat?” Ah, so the fact that he hadn’t touched any of the food back at their first meeting hadn’t slipped past Sjin’s attention. Daltos shakes his head; he’d eaten before leaving (rations can be hardly called a full meal but it'll tide him over). “Something to drink?” Undeterred, Sjin presses on with a cheerfulness that Daltos suspects is his usual facade. “I have wine, both red and white varieties…”

“You got any rakk ale?” Daltos interrupts.

That causes Sjin to look taken aback but only for a split second before he tuts, shaking his head. “Really, _rakk ale_?”

“Well, where I come from, wine don’t exactly grow on _trees_ ,” Daltos sarcastically retorts. “So, you got any or not?” He expects Sjin to give him something pretentious (really, _wine_ ) but he’s proven wrong.

Sjin withdraws a polished, dark brown glass bottle out from under his desk, handing it over. Daltos takes it, discreetly checking for any signs of it having been forced open (the seal’s still intact, the label denoting that it’d been made locally, something he approves of). Even through his gloves, the bottle feels chilled. The cap comes off with a loud snapping sound before he takes a swing from it.

It goes down exactly as rakk ale is expected to go down: with a slow, white-hot burn unlike any other drink he’s had that lingers longer than what’s considered polite, and leaving behind the aftertaste of burnt rubber.

This rakk ale is the good stuff too, an unexpected but pleasant bonus.

Much to his surprise, Sjin pulls out his own bottle of rakk ale, uncapping it (using a stylish looking bottle opener) and matching him in swing. Either Sjin’s just trying to impress him, being polite, or actually enjoys rakk ale more than he lets on. Daltos suspects the first. 

In any case, there’s no sense in getting drunk right off the bat since he wants to keep a clear head during this meeting.

Is this really a meeting? He’s generally more used to them involving a lot of shouting, threats of bodily harm he’s prepared to carry out and doing more damage control than one would expect. Having a meeting that’s as laid-back as this and less fueled by clashing egos is, dare he say it, refreshing. Sjin doesn’t need to know that, though.

“So, the deal,” Sjin starts, making a sour face at the aftertaste of the rakk ale (which Daltos is secretly entertained by). There’s an impatient undertone to his words partially concealed by his casualness.

“What about it?” Daltos says, his tone mild.

“Have you thought about it?”

He takes three seconds to answer, just because he can. “Yeah.”

“And your answer is…?” Sjin is wearing an eager look, so confident of the outcome he expects that Daltos almost feels sorry for what he’s about to do.

Daltos takes a moment to look serious just for the sake of appearance before bluntly saying, “No.”

“What do you mean, _no_?” Sjin rises from his chair, glaring at him for the sheer nerve of rejecting his offer. Daltos isn’t intimidated by the full force of his glare. “Did you just come all this way to my office to sit down and mooch drinks just to tell me that?” 

“Until I know exactly what I’m sending my bandits into, I’m not sending you a single one.” He folds his arms over his chest, deciding to not allow Sjin to push him around. While he considers his bandits wholly expendable, they’re still his bandits. Daltos firmly believes he deserves to know what sort of fate awaits them, however gruesome it may be.

There’s always a catch to these deals. Until he knows what that catch is, they’re not going to make any progress.

Sjin huffs, knowing this, not returning to his seat. He was counting on Daltos agreeing from the start (softened by such sweet promises of support and the offered hospitalities). With his refusal, it’s forcing the two of them to go down the dreary road of actually negotiating the details and reveal a crucial piece of his plans in the process.

Finding the switch on the control panel just under his desk, he flicks on the holographic display. 

In a way, Daltos proving resistant to any of the temptations laid out before him secretly delights him. If he’d accepted right off the bat, then Sjin would have been let down in his initial judgement of him.

A second later, a three-dimensional satellite map of Pandora blinks into existence, accompanied by its orbiting moon of Elpis. Hyperion’s Helios is a wireframe structure between the two. Sjin disregards the latter two to tap on the display of the planet.

He sharply prods at a certain area, pressing his fingers against the surface of the map, manipulating it until the map zooms in on several marked plots, outlined in white. 

Most of them are located on the east coast but not in any area that falls within Daltos’ territory. Still, he weaves it into his memory as best as he can, along with whatever snatches of coordinates he can make out. It might come in useful.

Sjin looks straight at Daltos through the map. His glare isn't as sharp as it was before, but he’s still irritated at having heard such a blunt rejection, judging by his curt tone.

“These are eridium deposits buried in land that SipsCo. has bought the deeds for. Our mining machines simply chews straight through eridium since it’s not quite like any other metal we’ve dug up.” Sjin pauses in his explanation to to check if Daltos is listening with a cursory glance. Daltos is listening, but he doesn’t have to do it with any great amount of interest. “It requires a more _delicate_ , human touch to mine it out-”

“I’m waiting for you to get straight to the point,” Daltos cuts in, growing bored of Sjin’s waffling (however informative it is). Fine, he’ll get straight to the point and fill him in on all the exact details later.

“You send some of your bandits to mine eridium for me and I’ll repay you with food, water, or whatever else you’ll need to cause trouble. _Anything_.” 

“You know, I haven’t heard pleasant things about eridium,” Daltos coolly points out. “And it’s not trouble I’m causing, it’s _war_ ,” He also corrects.

“Same thing,” Sjin says, scoffing after. “You have lots of bandits. I’m sure you can afford to lose a few to eridium poisoning or going stark raving mad in the mines.” He adds in a soft, sincere voice, regret tinging his expression for having lost his temper earlier, “They’ll be well taken care of.” 

The two of them know that ‘well taken care of’ could mean any number of things, on Pandora. Daltos has fallen silent, surveying the map with an expression giving nothing away. Sjin knows that it’s not an easy decision to make. Also, he’s just made sure that it’ll be next to impossible to say ‘no’ a second time by upping what he’s offering.

“Anything?” Daltos murmurs, his carefully blank glance sliding from the map to him. 

“ _Anything_.” Sjin continues on in the same tone, “All I ask for is a hundred bandits. Just a hundred bandits, in exchange for keeping a thousand more alive. What’ll it be?”

Unexpectedly, Daltos starts to laugh but it sounds so _wrong_ to Sjin. It’s the sort of broken, harsh laughter that comes from someone who’s used to making these decisions time and time again, fuck the consequences of not doing so, and fuck what sort of twisted image others might have of him, the outcome is all that matters.

Daltos stops laughing, a ghost of a wry smile on his face. When he speaks, he sounds calm, a jarring contrast to his laugh. “What kind of monster do you take me for? You’re just as monstrous as I am with a price like that.”

“I know, which is why I’m offering you the deal in the first place,” Sjin serenely says with a knowing smile.

Daltos stands up to extend a gloved hand to him. Sjin nudges aside the display to lean over the desk and take the offered hand, effectively sealing the deal.

He tries hard not to imagine the blood of more than a thousand, dead bandits (bandits, not people) dripping down from it, spreading from Daltos to him, a stain that’ll always cling to him. 

If that is what Daltos has to constantly live with (knowing the whole time that he’ll never be able to get rid of it)? Sjin is relieved that this is extent of his involvement. There are some areas that he’d rather steer clear of. Since this is unavoidable with what he has planned, he’ll just have to minimize dirtying his hands as much as possible.

Sjin lets go of his hand first, moving to curl his fingers around his warm bottle of rakk ale. It’s lifted into the air as he toasts. “To our prospective partnership,” He murmurs, as content as he can be with the outcome despite having taken a minor detour to achieve it.

Daltos says nothing, simply picking up his own bottle to down the rest of it in one go. Almost hungrily, Sjin watches the lines of his throat waver as he swallows the rakk ale.

By the time Daltos has put down the empty bottle, Sjin’s attention is on the map of Pandora that vanishes into thin air, like the remaining scraps of Daltos’ conscience.

\--

Daltos leaves drunk, late in the evening. Sherlock hadn’t been there to let him out so an equally drunk Sjin had gone ahead and done that in his place, also bidding him a slurred ‘good evening’ with a giggle.

Opportunity had been devoid of people so he’d been able to walk back to the Fast Travel Station in relative peace without any of their stares burning holes in his back.

Fuck, he doesn’t yet feel like ECHOing Hawker or Hurricane (not bothering to remember who’s on Buzzard duty) in advance for a pick-up. The second he appears in the Dahl Headland, he staggers over to a bunch of crates stacked along the wall of the shed. 

Sinking down onto one and resting the back of his head on the cold metal wall, Daltos spends a few moments to think about the turn his life’s just recently taken. 

The good news is that this isn’t the worst decision he’s ever made. The bad news is that he still has to break the news to his lieutenants as with every other major fucking decision he makes. It’s guaranteed that at least one lieutenant will find some sort of fault with it. He is not in the mood to deal with that. 

It’ll have to wait until tomorrow when he’s feeling well enough.

Ever since he’d been in Sjin’s office to see Sjin show his true colours, he’d felt the familiar itch to smoke. Since he hadn’t known if Sjin would have let him have a smoke in that over decorated, pristine office of his, he’d had to curb that itch several times by drinking.

None of his lieutenants are around to nag him, so now’s a good as time as any to finally satisfy that itch. Daltos pulls out his box of cigarettes, extracting one before it’s stowed back in his inventory.

His lighter’s almost dead, only letting him coax a pitiful-looking spark of a flame from it. Great, now he’ll also have to track down a new lighter. The lighter also goes into his inventory.

He tries not to smoke these days since the smell has a habit of sticking to him until he changes clothes. He doesn’t notice it but his lieutenants tend to disapprove if there’s even the faintest trace of it clinging to him. He’s drunk enough not to care this time, however.

Maybe he should quit smoking.

The instant that idea pops up, he crushes it. He’s not addicted since he doesn’t chain smoke. On good days (and those are proving rarer and rarer), he doesn’t even think of reaching for the box. On bad days, the most he’ll go through is at least five smokes, each one staggered alongside his breaks and time off.

The actual act of smoking helps him deal with everything that is his life. It’s either that or revert to murdering his bandits as a source of immediate stress relief.

While his lieutenants would applaud the idea, thinning his gang’s numbers out with mass murder isn’t a feasible, long-term strategy so he’s rather against it. Until then, he’s just going to continue the habit, fuck the nagging.

His ECHO device is now pinging. He ignores it for about five minutes, electing to spend the time finishing up his smoke. They’re proving awfully persistent in trying to reach him, so he takes the cigarette out of his mouth and answers once he’s had enough.

“What?” Daltos snaps at whoever’s calling.

“Where the fucking _hell_ are you? It’s been more than three hours-” Arsenal’s voice has a note of barely suppressed rage in it, with underlying worry. It’s such a change from his usual calmness that it gives Daltos pause. Only for one second, though.

“Calm down, I’m back at the Dahl Headland.” He only ever slurs his words once and only when the last one leaves his mouth.

“You’re at the- _fuck_ , okay.” Arsenal makes a sound that’s halfway between exasperation and relief. “He’s fine! Just...” He shouts to someone off-screen. Arsenal proceeds to ask him, “Hang on a second, are you _drunk_?”

“Afraid so,” Daltos responds, not caring if Arsenal’s just realized that fact. “Is it that obvious?”

“Okay, why are you drunk?” Daltos is about to explain why he’s drunk when Arsenal impatiently continues with, “Never mind, tell me later. What’s your location?”

“Fast Travel Station.” He sends the coordinates to Arsenal.

“I’m sending Hawker to pick you up. You’re not driving back in that state.” Is that concern? How _touching_.

“Hey, I couldn’t drive back even if I wanted to. You know that the Catch-A-Ride machine here is off-limits to bandits because of that Hodunk prick.” That’s why his gang have to make their own vehicles, upload it onto the frigate’s barely functional and finicky system and utilise their own digistruct network to spawn vehicles.

“Look, just stay put.” Is Arsenal pleading him to behave? Today is just full of surprises. “Don’t go anywhere.”

“Better hope that Hawker gets here in time then. I might decide to wander off if he takes too long.”

“Daltos, don’t be a dick-”

Daltos cuts the call, switching off his ECHO device and tossing it back into his inventory. He’s going to regret that later but talking with Arsenal is giving him the mother of all headaches. It’s not like Arsenal to fret about him taking too long to return.

Usually it’s Cant, Klemm or Hawker doing the worrying-fuck, if he’s sent Hawker to pick him up, then Hawker is definitely going to make a scene.

As much as he wants to have another smoke, he’s only got about ten or so minutes left before Hawker arrives. Daltos reluctantly puts out his cigarette. He can’t do anything about the smell sticking to him but at least Hawker isn’t the type to persistently nag; they’re the type to mutter under their breath about it instead within earshot.

The sound of a Buzzard circling overhead clues him into Hawker’s arrival, followed shortly by the sound of the engines cutting out before it lands a few metres away from the shed. A figure bobs in the darkness, lit up by a handheld light dangling from their hip before they rush towards him. The beam of the light shines right into his face.

He raises an arm to shield his face and mind from the possibility of his headache growing worse, taking his mood with it.

“Daltos!” Hawker sounds just as relieved as Arsenal to see him. If he’d been anybody with a conscience left to spare, that would have incited a stab of guilt in him. Being this drunk also helps to smother any twinges of emotion. Hawker gently takes hold of his raised arm. “Let’s go home-have you been smoking again?” A disapproving glance is directed at the cigarette on the ground by his boot.

“You can nag at me all you want, it ain’t going to make a difference,” Daltos points out.

He tugs his arm out of Hawker’s grip, moving towards the Buzzard. Hawker hovers beside him with an anxiousness betraying how worried they are to find him this drunk; they definitely hand him the carabiners with deliberate care so that he doesn’t have to fumble to find the bit that clips onto his belt. He clips the carabiners on.

Hawker spends far too long making sure that he’s properly seated by going over the zip lines so Daltos hits them in the arm to indicate his growing impatience.

“Okay, I think you won’t fall,” Hawker finally admits, handing him the spare goggles.

Daltos rolls his eyes, pulling the goggles on. “Don’t make me swap places with you and fly this thing back drunk.” His lieutenant’s being rather quiet. He’d expected more of a bigger fuss.

Hawker says nothing in response, leaving him to climb into the pilot’s seat. A few seconds later, there’s that familiar feeling of his stomach being left behind as the Buzzard takes off into the night sky. Flying in the dark is different. He can’t see anything, his goggles lacking night vision. Unable to take in any scenery, he closes his eyes and lets the wind thread its icy fingers into his clothes, skin and hair.

It sobers him up, but not enough to make him really regret coming back this drunk.

Eventually, whiteness bleeds into his vision. The top of the frigate is lined with spotlights rigged to follow or spot any incoming aircraft. One of them follows Hawker as they direct the Buzzard down.

Daltos opens his eyes to the platform coming up under his feet. The Buzzard lands with barely a bump, Hawker hastily moving to climb out first and help him up. By then, Daltos has already unclipped the carabiners, tossing them and the goggles aside to rise and walk into the airlock.

Arsenal is waiting on the other side of the airlock, leaning against the doorway there. Daltos’ eyes drift down to Arsenal’s left leg, the one that he’s keeping the majority of his weight off of. For Arsenal to have willingly made his way up to the top of the frigate must mean he’s more than _livid_.

He lets his gaze land on Arsenal’s expression and set jaw. It’s been a long time since he’s ever seen him this angry, his eyebrows drawn, and sporting a glare that could have caused a raging Goliath to think twice about taking him on. 

Daltos meets that glare without flinching.

Hawker looks between the two of them as they come in, concerned about the potential of a fight (which says a lot about how worried they are when they’d have normally egged it on).

“Hawker, you’re dismissed,” Arsenal says in a neutral tone, beating Daltos to it. 

Unable to ignore a direct order from Arsenal without risking his infamous wrath, Hawker slinks off but not without some reluctance in their first few steps. They throw a nervous glance back at them before vanishing down the hall (no doubt to tell their twin, Hurricane, about what’s happening).

“Arsenal-”

“How drunk are you?” Arsenal asks, cutting him off with the abruptness of his question.

“Enough to know I’m going to have a killer hangover when I wake up,” Daltos answers, more bracingly than needed.

His lieutenant limps over to him so that he’s now in arm’s reach. His voice drops in volume to ground out as calmly as he possibly can while glaring at him still, “It ain’t like you to be gone for that long. Do you have any idea how fucking close we were to-”

“Well, did anything _explode_ while I was gone? Actually, did anybody even _die_?” Daltos interrupts him in turn out of spite. His headache is not helping, determinedly scratching away at the inside of his skull thanks to the hallway’s brilliant, fluorescent lighting.

“No,” Arsenal reluctantly admits after a beat, but goes on to make a frustrated sound, his glare’s intensity fading with that admission. “But Arado was this close to shooting Bachem in the face-”

“Then everything’s fine!” Daltos throws both of his hands up into the air, a mocking gesture that annoys Arsenal, judging by the return of his glare. “Bachem’s a fucking dick anyway so you should have let Scarface do it to save me the trouble of doing it myself-” 

Arsenal’s knuckles slam into the side of his face.

The force of his punch sends Daltos almost crashing into a wall if he hadn't tensed up at the last second. One of his hands is already feeling out the damage along his jaw. A bruise will have formed by tomorrow. He takes his hand away from his face.

The effort of throwing that punch, combined with having to make his way up from the lower levels of the frigate to meet him has dearly cost Arsenal. The hand that he hadn’t used to punch him is clutching at his left leg. A pain usually dormant is flaring into life with a vengeance.

Daltos moves to support him in silence, letting a grimacing Arsenal throw a shaking hand over his shoulders so he can help him down the corridor to his room. 

Nobody has dared to come up to stickybeak; Hurricane’s done a damned good job in making sure of that once Hawker had alerted them. He’ll have to think about thanking the two later and hope it doesn't go to their heads.

Once they reach his room, Daltos lets Arsenal limp over to his bed to slump heavily down onto it, long fingers dragging the left leg of his pants up. 

A mangled network of fine scars offset by jagged, irregular ones wrap around Arsenal’s calf before snaking over his shin and looping back around. In the middle of all that that is a dark blemish of a circle barely larger than a thumbnail.

Falling into an old rhythm, his fingers massage the muscles along there, attempting to stop them from spasming and making the pain even worse. Grimacing at the lack of relief, Arsenal tugs the fabric back down to wait for the pain to go away of its own accord.

Daltos reaches into his inventory to pull out a capped bottle of rakk ale that he’d been meaning to save for a rainy day. He holds it out by the neck. Arsenal takes it without a word, screwing the cap off in one fluid motion and taking a swing.

“Thanks,” He eventually rasps, not making a face at the aftertaste. “If this is the stuff you got drunk on, I don’t blame you for being such a lightweight.” He gives the bottle a light shake, the liquid in it sloshing around.

“Dunno where Sjin got it from, but I ain’t complaining.” Daltos flops down onto the bed next to him. Arsenal passes him the bottle.

“How did the meeting go?” Most of Arsenal’s anger has dissipated, giving way to an unfamiliar exhaustion that usually dogs the heels of an outburst.

“Well enough.” Daltos knocks back another mouthful, feeling the burn further his inebriation. He’s already coming close to hitting the limit of his tolerance. Any more and he’ll simply pass out. Appearing to sense that he’s drunk enough as it is, Arsenal leans over to pluck the bottle out of his hand.

“Well enough for you to spend _five_ hours there?” Nope, it’s not Daltos’ imagination that Arsenal sounds salty. The alcohol is already having an effect on him; he’s not grimacing so much from the pain now, his expression having settled into one of weariness. 

Actually, it looks like Arsenal’s just rolled out of bed, his brown hair a disheveled mess. It looks like he’s not wearing a shirt under his jacket; there’s a glimpse of a collarbone since Arsenal hasn't pulled the zipper all the way up. He’s not wearing any digistruct modules or a bandolier either.

“Didn’t feel like five hours,” Daltos admits. He actually hadn’t known it to be dark until he’d looked outside past a grinning Sjin and saw the lit up view of Opportunity. The realization had jolted him into checking the clock in his HUD. Sure enough, more than five hours had flown by without his knowledge.

Arsenal lets his scrutinizing gaze travel over him. “So long as you did whatever you needed to get done.” He smacks aside Daltos’ hand when he tries to grab the bottle of rakk ale back. “Did you have a _wonderful_ time?”

“ _Fuck off_ , you can't imagine what he offered.” If he hadn't remembered that Arsenal’s leg is still playing up, he’d have shoved him off the bed for not letting him retrieve the bottle. He opts to nudge him in the side instead, with his elbow. “We’d have the entirety of the east and west coast under flying our flag in several years if we keep going at our current pace.”

The nudge with his elbow causes Arsenal to drain the rest of the bottle in revenge. Daltos shoots him a half-hearted glare for hogging the rest of it. Arsenal just lets out a derisive snort, messily wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Your ambition knows no bounds,” Arsenal observes with a dryness that reminds him of Arado. 

“If you have a problem with it, speak now or forever hold your peace.”

Arsenal gives a shake of his head to indicate that he has no objections. That’s how Daltos know he’s just salty about him coming back so late. It’s odd. He’s been away on campaigns lasting a solid week, usually coming back from those a few days overdue. Arsenal’s never had a problem with it before until now.

With the bottle that Arsenal’s hanging onto now empty, Daltos gives up on trying to harass him for it. He runs a hand through his hair, now feeling the lure of sleep tug at his consciousness, a sweet temptation he wants to give into. Speaking of which.

“Didn’t you say earlier that Arado almost shot Bachem?”

His question causes Arsenal to look just a touch uneasy, shifting on the edge of the bed. He quietly says, “Bachem was going on about how you’d ditched us. Arado decided he needed to shut up.”

“Does that count as treason?”

“Probably.” A shrug from Arsenal indicates a startling lack of concern in regards to the semantics; Daltos is more occupied with Bachem’s newfound eagerness to challenge him over who’s in charge. That particular lieutenant’s always been a thorn in his side, from the very moment he’d joined up with them.

No wonder why Arsenal had been so worried about his prolonged absence. Bachem has enough of an influence over the heavy and hard-hitting troops that a potential mutiny led by him could do some serious damage to the frigate and the internal workings of his gang. 

This is precisely why he leaves someone like Arado in charge; while he and Arado didn’t always see eye to eye, Arado knows exactly what to do in these sorts of situations, putting his gang’s welfare ahead of everything else. That includes having to off one of their more treacherous lieutenants to preserve the status quo without Daltos’ prior say-so if it ever came to that.

The entire gang has to run smoothly, a well-oiled machine with not a single gear out of place so that even if one part is removed for whatever reason, the rest of it can still run on its own. 

Almost all of it had been due to his own handiwork to get it to exist in the first place. Arado and a handful of approved others can be trusted to oversee its maintenance when he’s not able to do so himself.

It’s a shame that Arsenal can’t do that these days due to the bullet embedded in his leg keeping him from being able to walk to the war room and provide valuable input. To make up for that, he kept an ear to the ground to know everything else that’s going on in the frigate, on top of making sure almost all of their gear, equipment and vehicles are in the best condition they could possibly be in.

If he has legitimate reason to be worried, then Daltos concedes that he has some serious revision to do in regards to his priorities, like being back in time to tell Bachem to step down or plant a bullet into his lieutenant’s skull himself. 

He’s not guilty for coming back so late. He and Sjin actually made some serious progress in working out the finer details of their deal. Contrary to what Arsenal and a few of his other lieutenants think, he hadn’t actually spent the entire time drinking.

“I’ll have to have a word with him about it-” Make that one more thing to deal with; fuck, no wonder why he smokes so much. Every single time he goes off somewhere, new problems seemed to spring up out of nowhere in his absence.

“Bucker’s already taken care of it,” Arsenal interrupts. “You don’t have to worry about it.” Asshole. He could have said so sooner.

“Explain to me exactly how it went down.” Even if he wants nothing more than to nod off, he forces himself to pay attention. 

Arsenal’s known him for long enough not to take offence if he just simply put his head down and fell asleep right that second. He’s also seen Arsenal do pretty much the exact same thing under similar circumstances, even mid-conversation.

“You said you’d be gone for three hours.” Arsenal swallows, his fingers around the bottle gripping it more tightly than before. “When three became five hours, that force you sent up north finally came back. Bachem wanted to brag about how he’d won and did all the work while Bucker went off to go and rest, so he went to go find you.”

“I wasn’t here to hear him brag and he threw a tantrum,” Daltos guesses. It would not surprise him in the least if that’s exactly what had happened. To be fair, he hadn’t expected those units to return until the next day. It’s likely that Arsenal knows that, though.

“Heh, not quite.” Arsenal lets out a cynical laugh. “He went to find Arado and brag to him instead, noticed you weren’t around and Arado wouldn’t give him a straight answer as to where you’d gone…” See, he’s right about some of his lieutenants proving to be stickybeaks when least convenient.

“Because he was worried Bachem would find out?” It’s not exactly a problem if Bachem finds out he’d gone to cut a deal with Sjin, but he’d probably find some way to twist it so that he’s a part of it or risk blowing the issue out of proportion to drag the others into the resulting mess.

“I guess? I wasn’t around when they started arguing but Arado told me that’s what started it. The rest is fucking history.”

“And how did you get involved? I can’t really see you running...” Daltos gestures to Arsenal’s left leg.

“I got woken up by Cant, who basically carried me all the way up. Screamed the entire way, mind you, but he did get me there in time to stop Arado from shooting Bachem.” The mental image of Cant carrying Arsenal (bridal or fireman style) causes Daltos to start snickering. Arsenal throws him a pointed look, his eyes narrowing. “Shut up, if I’d limped all the way up there, I’d have found Bachem’s body instead. You’re _fucking welcome_.”

“Thanks.” Daltos tries to sound sincere but fails as he's still snickering, earning no reaction from Arsenal.

Daltos doesn’t need to apologize to Arsenal. Similarly, Arsenal doesn’t need to apologize for punching him. Some things just never needed to be said when two people, one of whom had gladly followed the other into hell and back out, then inevitably paid for it, ending up where they currently are.

The two sit in relative silence, until Arsenal heaves himself off the bed to leave Daltos’ room, only to stop with a pained hiss and press a hand to his left leg.

“I can call Cant up here to carry you back down.” Daltos slides his ECHO device out of his inventory, the idea intended to rile Arsenal up; he doesn’t actually feel like talking to Cant. Arsenal doesn’t need to know that he’s just bluffing.

“ _No_ ,” is Arsenal’s testy reply. Daltos laughs at his reaction. Even Arsenal doesn’t feel like dealing with Cant right now, in his current state. That’d demand more patience than what he and Arsenal are currently capable of sparing.

“What about Hawker and Hurricane?” Daltos suggests. “They’re not that far away and are usually happy enough to help.” 

The two are only a ten minute walk away, preferring to sleep in jury-rigged hammocks in one of the hangers assigned to their aerial units rather than in their designated quarters located further down in the frigate.

“I’ll be fine,” Arsenal insists. “This is the last time I’m ever coming up here, though. All this is making my leg ache something fierce. The next time anything happens up on the bridge, you’re on your own.” Daltos almost disregards his warning, noting that Arsenal sounds a mixture of apologetic and standoffish. He moves to take the empty bottle from Arsenal’s hand but Arsenal raises it out of his reach. “I’ll get rid of this.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure. Enjoy your hangover. Night.” The door slides shut once Arsenal’s clear of it. He can hear the steady tread of Arsenal limping down the hallway towards the way down to the lower levels of the frigate.

Daltos is too tired to describe the day’s events as an audio recording to his ECHO device so he jots down a few notes. He’ll get to it later. 

That done, he peels off his jacket and shirt (both still smelling of cigarette smoke and alcohol, what a great combination) to toss them over the back of a nearby chair. His boots are tucked off to the side. 

The digistruct module containing his guns is dropped next to his pillow so that it’s within his reach no matter how much he tosses and turns. His shield is at full charge. He guesses the battery is still good for another month or so before he has to switch it out.

He turns off the light, walking back to his bed to climb in, curling up on his side. He can now let the exhaustion he’d been holding at bay overcome him at last. Not that it’ll do him a bit of good but he’s learnt the hard way that even a bit of sleep is better than none.

\--

As predicted, he wakes up with a hangover that’d have downed even Gotha, his Goliath lieutenant. He runs both hands through his hair and over his face, now regretting having let himself indulge so much at Sjin’s office. The bruise Arsenal gave him has finally bloomed along his jaw.

That punch might have loosened a tooth, he thinks when he runs his palm along the site.

While he’s doing that, his hearing picks up on a scraping sound coming from outside his door. Daltos draws his SMG once the module’s clipped onto his belt next to his shield. Barefoot, he pads over to his door. He is careful to avoid stepping on any of the loose floor panels.

The scraping sounds continue outside, almost as if someone’s trying to scratch their way through several layers of almost soundproof metal. It’s not the best way to try to kill him; they’re better off just forcing the door open and ambushing him.

With his free hand, he jabs at the button to open the door, drawing his SMG up in the same second the door slides open. The barrel of his SMG comes to rest on a psycho’s masked face, leather buckles stretched around a bald, scarred head.

The two metre tall psycho is hunched over so that their face can be level with his own, ignoring the gun staring them in the face. Daltos lowers his SMG, giving them an incredulous look as his hangover makes itself known in the form of giving a pronounced throb of pain.

“Cant, no buzzaxes in the frigate,” He says, despawning his SMG. “Put it away.”

“Cant!” The psycho waves the buzzaxe in an annoyed manner. They keep the edge far away from him, though. Daltos’ eyes flick over to the deep scratches left on the wall where they’d been scratching away. He’ll have to come up with a cover story so that Arsenal doesn’t punish Cant.

“I didn’t make the rule, Arsenal did,” He notes, not sounding as apologetic as he should be. “It’d be bad if you hit him or anyone else by accident.”

“Cant,” They say in a sullen tone. He can’t see their eyes through the mask thanks to the glowing circles in place of them. The staring is pretty fierce, though. At least he’s used to it; it also means Cant is paying attention (for once).

“I’m not forcing you to put away the buzzaxe, but if you accidentally hit me with it, I _will_ hit you back,” He points out. “I don’t think either of us want that to happen.”

Cant tilts their head to the side, appearing to reconsider having their buzzaxe out. It vanishes into thin air. Having nothing in their hand, they clench and unclench it, the motions coming off as sulky.

Satisfied he’s not in any immediate danger of an ambush, Daltos turns around to walk back into his room to get dressed. He takes one step when a bandaged hand deftly snakes out, grabbing him by the wrist to yank him back. Cant carefully turns him around before he can retaliate, leaning in close to inspect him.

He goes still, knowing that Cant means no harm but their behaviour is puzzling. He hasn’t been in any serious fights recently to warrant that much scrutiny from them, nor has he been- _oh_ , of fucking course. The bruise on his face. Thanks, Arsenal.

He can feel their gaze passing over it. The fingers coiled around his wrist twitch in reflex like Cant is toying with the idea of bringing them up to run them over the bruise in fascination. Something else much more important draws their attention away.

“Cant,” They say in a low, menacing tone at noticing the telltale, acrid smell that’s still following him around. Daltos reaches up to deliver a rough chop to the hand that’s still hanging onto him. “Cant!” They yelp, nursing their hurt hand by holding it close to their stomach. 

Not forgetting that easily for having noticed him smoking, they glare at him. He shakes his wrist, flexing it several times to check for any damage.

Cant hadn’t grabbed him that hard but sometimes they didn’t know their own strength. He says that because he’s seen them slice through an armored bandit with one swing of their buzzaxe, their swing carrying straight through another bandit standing next to them.

Or maybe they did know and simply played the fool to escape the blame if they accidentally destroyed something, like dropping one of Arsenal’s ammo containers after carrying it in.

“That’s what you get for touching me,” Daltos says, about to go into a lecture but realizes the futility of it since anything longer than a few sentences slips Cant’s attention.

“Cant,” Cant repeats in a menacing tone, straightening up to their full height and almost bumping their head on the ceiling.

Daltos rolls his eyes at the attempt to intimidate him, striding back into his room. Cant follows him in, stooping under the doorway to avoid a concussion, their head swinging up and around to take in his room.

Bucker must have his hands full with other duties. Cant isn't usually allowed to roam the frigate without him in tow. Daltos is actually surprised that Cant’s remembered where his room is after only having been this way once.

It's either that or someone had led Cant to his room and ditched them outside to annoy him. He’ll have to find out who but first, he has to find clothing that’s smoke free. Mumbling their name under their breath, Cant busies with opening an empty locker, closing it upon seeing nothing of interest in it and moving on to the next one. 

Seeing nothing wrong with their poking around, Daltos turns around.

Watching him turn away, Cant falls silent. They stealthily shuffle over to the chair with his jacket and shirt slung over it. Their hand drifts towards the digistruct module containing the cigarettes and lighter, slowly. He’s only a metre or so away, still occupied with shifting through his disorganised belongings.

Noticing it'd gone suspiciously quiet, Daltos lifts his head up from rummaging in his locker. He turns around, startling Cant who lunges for the module.

Daltos is faster, snatching up both items of clothing to vanish them into his inventory. That sends his module flying up into the air out of Cant’s reach. He catches the module in one hand, clipping it into his belt. Having failed, Cant gives a mulish jerk of their head, withdrawing their hand.

“You devious fucker,” Daltos says, but not without letting a tiny bit of admiration seep into his voice.

“Cant,” They say, sounding irritated, slamming their hand against the floor. “Cant! Cant! Cant!”

“Calm down, I'll quit smoking-” Daltos starts, causing Cant to look at him with a hopeful air, “ _only_ if you lot stop driving me up the wall.” At this, Can't eagerly nods, the leather buckles of their mask clinking. “That includes you.” Cant visibly droops.

Daltos has half a mind to pull out a cigarette on the spot and start smoking just to see what kind of reaction it’d earn from Cant. He has a strict, as of yet unbroken policy about not smoking in his own room, so as much as he’d like to, he actually can't wind up Cant. 

It’d also be best not to let himself accumulate another bad habit as a result of another.

He can't find a clean shirt, so he fishes out the one from yesterday. The smell of both the rakk ale and his smoking are more obvious than he’d thought. No wonder why Cant had picked up on it with ease, even through their mask.

Spotting what he intends to do, Cant lets out a loud, exasperated sound that's muffled by their mask. They lope over to one of the lockers they'd investigated earlier, fetching one of his clean shirts he’d overlooked, holding it out.

Daltos stares. Cant waggles the shirt they’re holding with an expectant air. They throw it at him when he doesn't react. He catches it, dropping the other shirt into his inventory. 

Cant impatiently mimes pulling it on with their good hand. Their other arm that’s always bound up in a makeshift cast constructed of bandages, wood and metal bits dangles uselessly by their side. That one arm has always been broken when he searches his memory for a time where it’s not.

They take a step towards him that’s brimming with intent. Daltos hastily pulls on the shirt before they can try to help him. Digistructing his jacket earns him a vigorous shake of their head.

“It’s the only jacket I have.” That’s a white lie. He has another, perfectly good jacket stashed in the locker he’d just been through. It’s not a navy blue color so he doesn’t like wearing it. 

The locker door behind is snapped shut with a clang of metal so that Cant can’t see said jacket. His other two jackets need to be thrown in the wash (okay, he swears that after the meeting, he’s going sort out his own laundry situation, it’s getting ridiculous).

Cant appears to accept his lie, but with reluctance, drawing away. That issue settled, he sits down on the bed to lace up his boots. Cant spends the time pacing the length of his room with an air of not quite hidden impatience.

The second he stands up and walks towards the door, Cant nudges him in the small of his back with apparent eagerness to finally be going somewhere.

“Nudge me again and I'll dislocate your good arm,” Daltos warns after recovering from his stumble.

“Cant,” They mutter, not sounding the least bit apologetic. They do sign ‘sorry’, albeit half-heartedly.

Daltos sends a message to the lieutenants who are at the frigate, expecting them to be in the war room in about ten minutes. Anybody who arrives late has the honour of minding Cant for the next two days in place of Bucker, whether Cant likes them or not. 

He gets there with a minute to spare, counting eleven lieutenants milling around in the room. For once, they’re actually all on time, which pleases him. He can’t tell whether or not if it’s because none of them (except for Bucker) want to babysit Cant. 

As usual, Arsenal is absent, content to be left alone downstairs. Daltos hopes his leg has stopped hurting so that he doesn’t bitch about it later.

Silence doesn't descend until he strides in, Cant moving to stand behind Bucker and fidget. Lifting up the brim of their wide brimmed hat, Bucker gives Cant a long, searching look for vanishing. They return it in the form of staring back, their mask concealing whatever face they’re making underneath.

Next to Gotha, Bachem (sporting several discolored bruises on his face) glares daggers at Daltos rather than Arado. He pretends not to see it, moving to the back of the room and turning to face them, his hands crossed over his chest. Eyes linger on the bruise on his face. It’s stopped hurting, the only reminder being the occasional twinge of pain whenever he clenches his jaw.

“Alright, which one of you fuckers sent Cant to wake me up?” Daltos shoots an expectant look at his assembled lieutenants. Meanwhile, Cant has the gall to seem pleased at having succeeded in doing their job well. 

Some of the lieutenants suppress snickers under their hands. Others are smart enough to look impassive as the corners of their mouths twitch. A few do not give a shit, judging by their lack of a reaction. Gotha grunts something about ‘hurrying up’. Daltos’ look becomes a glare.

Seeing it, Bucker puts his hand up (to everyone’s relief), if only to explain in a sheepish tone, “It was Arsenal’s idea.”

“ _Thank you_.” Daltos drops the glare, making a mental note to track down Arsenal later. 

For now, he drops the glare and sets about overseeing the meeting. He grabs the map of Pandora from where it’s sitting on top of a broken down console, laying it out across the table with a rustle of paper. His lieutenants crowd around it, jostling one another until they’re all positioned to see the map.

There's a grace period of about a week before he sends the lieutenants in charge of territory acquisition back out again to avoid them turning on him for the constant pressure. The period is extended two to three weeks if they're injured or need more time to recuperate. 

They’re also free to request switching out with someone else. None of them like to voluntarily do so on the account of appearing weak or lazy. Or letting someone else hog all their potential kills and the glory.

That time also gives any new ‘recruits’ time to settle as he figures out where they should end up being assigned. Arado usually likes to oversee that so Daltos is more than happy to let them manage that aspect. The other thing he has to watch out for is any disgruntled recruits picking a major fight with any of the existing units.

Under conditions like these, a minor scuffle could spark an all out brawl, complete with gunfire, explosions and casualties on both sides.

There's nothing worse than an almost decimated unit being wiped out while trying to get back on their feet. It's happened before to all of his lieutenants at some point or another, so they’re familiar enough with the signs to crack down on any restless bandits still spoiling for a fight (even after having been beaten into submission).

Some of the more bad-tempered lieutenants have to be kept an eye on. New recruits could suffer if there's any ill sentiment on the lieutenants’ part for any lost bandits replaced by any of the newly recruited ones. That’s something Arado and Daltos have to take into account.

Bachem is the worst offender _and_ he's aware of it so they have to keep him suitably distracted or happy. It'll be hard to do that now, seeing as he's quite possibly still pissed at the two of them. Daltos can feel him still glaring daggers at him, growing sick of it half an hour into the meeting.

He lifts his head up to glare back at him. A few of the lieutenants glance up as well to see what’s wrong when he’s stopped talking, then hastily back down to avoid being dragged into the situation. 

On his left, Hurricane grabs a gawking Hawker by the back of the head, forcing them to look down. The two of them apparently remember Arsenal and Daltos’ scuffle from yesterday. Hawker resists at first, wanting to help Daltos but relents to their twin’s will, having no influence over Bachem to successfully intimidate him into backing off.

“You got a problem with Daltos?” Gotha’s deep voice rumbles with a threatening undertone from over Bachem’s right shoulder. Daltos opens his mouth to tell Gotha to ‘fuck off, this is his problem’ but Bachem’s already turned around to direct his glare at the Goliath.

Gotha towers well over him but that doesn’t deter Bachem from scowling. “Yeah, he wasn’t around yesterday to hear my report, so I had to take it to Arado instead. He was none too happy about getting it.” That’s not quite the truth but not a lie either, judging by Arado’s frown.

The lieutenants who are unaware of the situation throw confused looks at one another, whispers threading amongst them. They’re hushed by Hurricane. Cant looks from both parties to another, causing Bucker to grab a strap of their mask as a warning, stopping them from joining in. Cant strains at his grip, uttering a low sound that’s almost a growl.

Arado speaks up, their tone possessing a bristling quality to it, “You tried to throw your weight around when he wasn't here, so I thought I’d teach you some manners in his place.” They step forward, fingers curling around the edge of the helmet under their arm.

“You call pointing a gun at me and threatening to _shoot_ me in the head ‘teaching me manners?’” Bachem scoffs, straightening up, the rocket launchers on his back clanking. Several of the more skittish lieutenants flinch. The sound is a potent reminder of what he can do when sufficiently pissed off.

“Don’t fucking twist the subject. _After_ your report, you said Daltos ditched us, and then you wouldn’t shut the fuck up about it and how you’d make a better leader,” Arado grounds out, “which sounds an awful lot like _treason_.”

“Is this true?” Gotha peers intensely at Bachem through the slits of their helmet. Uncertainty flickers over Bachem’s face upon seeing Gotha’s eyes flash, giving him a hint of a rage constantly kept in check. “We don’t like traitors.”

“It ain’t treason if he fucked off somewhere and leaves us to pick up the slack-” He points out, only for Arado to cut him off.

“That ain't any of your business-”

“He was gone for five hours and didn’t say where he was going, which is mighty suspicious.” Bachem takes a few steps forward, right into Arado’s personal space, snarling.

“Which is why _I’m_ here running this shit instead-” Arado counters, just as heatedly.

“Hey, I’m going to need the two of you to _shut up_ and let me run this fucking meeting,” Daltos interjects, having had enough of the escalating argument. He glares at Bachem. “Where I go is my own business, so-”

Ever so insolent, Bachem growls, “If you ain’t got nothing to hide, then spill where you went-”

Daltos just punches Bachem in the gut, causing them to double over, giving a startled sound of pain. That’s not enough to abate his irritation at being interrupted, so his hand finds the back of Bachem’s head, slamming it into his knee with a resulting ‘crack’. Bleeding profusely from their broken nose, they fall to their knees, hands clutching at their face.

“Don’t interrupt me when I’m speaking.” He plants a boot on the back of their head, pressing down with sufficient force so that their forehead is forced to touch the floor. “I went to go cut a deal with a new business partner of mine. Does that satisfy your curiosity, or do I got to detail everything about my life, including what I eat, when I sleep, shower or what?”

He lets up on stepping on him, only just so that he can see Bachem give an imperceptible nod. He takes his boot off the back of their head. The sound of blood dripping onto the floor and pained breathing are unusually loud, preventing any silence from descending. 

Gotha lets out an amused snort, already having lost interest the second Bachem was hit. Arado shakes their head, turning away with an approving glint in their eyes. Cant utters a series of soft sounds that’s their equivalent of a smothered laugh, Bucker letting go of them at last now that the danger’s passed.

It takes the others a little longer to pry their eyes away from the sight of Bachem struggling to sit up. 

“Klemm, you’re excused to make sure I haven’t killed him,” Daltos lightly says. Klemm obeys, moving to heft Bachem up and out of the room, trailing blood onto the floor.

“Up you get,” Klemm grunts. Bachem says nothing, a hand clapped over their nose and mouth. Nothing but the blackest of hate burns in his gaze when Daltos meets his eyes. He can probably expect another attempt (direct or indirect, it doesn’t matter) to kill him soon.

“I’ll let Klemm know how the meeting goes,” Fieseler mumbles, their voice pitched so that Daltos can actually hear them.

“Good,” Daltos says, turning back to the map of Pandora. He looks at Arado, briefly, Arado catching his eye. Arado nods, returning their gaze to the map in front of them as he details their next set of movements in regards to where they should wage war.

“Fucking _brutal_ ,” Hawker whispers to Hurricane. Hurricane shushes them, shooting a wary glance at Daltos to see if he’d heard. He had but lets it slide. 

By the end of the meeting, almost everyone has forgotten about the incident. It’s not the first time Daltos has beaten a problematic lieutenant back into line, nor the last.

“Arado, Bucker, a word,” Daltos quietly tells the two as the last lieutenants (deep in conversation and with new objectives to carry out) drift out of the war room. Cant turns back to find Bucker, but Hawker and Hurricane proceed to lead them away with promises of more stories.

The door closes, leaving Daltos, Arado and Bucker alone. He gestures them over, leading them into a series of rooms at the very back, past the busted consoles.

The room they’re now standing in houses rows of almost dormant servers, their blue lights dim. Only one of the servers is lit up for the purposes of monitoring the frigate’s condition and to keep all their vehicle blueprints stored. The war room’s door isn’t that soundproof so to minimize eavesdropping, he’d led them back here. There’s another room (its original purpose now moot) behind him that he’s long sealed shut so that it's inaccessible.

Daltos knows that the two of them have no problem with him beating up Bachem. It seemed like Bachem’s forgotten who’s in charge. Bucker looks guilty for not having done good enough of a job to silence him.

“Well, at least he won’t hate you so much now that I’ve broken his nose again,” Daltos notes, with a sarcastic cheerfulness.

The guilt slides off Bucker’s face with that bit of consolation. “Yeah. So, what’d you call us back here for?”

“I got a deal with someone to send about a hundred bandits their way in exchange for supplies and funding,” Daltos explains. 

During the meeting, he’d resolved to at least, tell these two about what’s going on. To him, a hundred bandits isn’t a lot but it’s still a decent chunk of his gang being singled out to go and work in conditions that’d kill them in the end. In his eyes, it’s still worth sacrificing those hundred for what Sjin’s potentially offering.

Bucker and Arado take in the news without much of a reaction. Bucker’s eyes widen once he understands. He lets out a soft, surprised sound, fingers stroking his stubbled chin. “A hundred bandits ain’t that easy to get together on short notice. When do you need them by?”

“I’m not sending them over yet. I’m just letting you know in advance,” Daltos quietly says, “so you can start putting together a list of who should go.”

“We’ll need one of the Buzzard boys to scout out an area where they can camp until then,” Bucker proposes. “Preferably one who can keep their mouth shut.”

“And supplies to keep them happy,” Arado notes. “I’ll draw up an inventory and set some shit aside. I can get that done before Bucker moves out again.”

Daltos softly adds, “Bucker, I should warn you first that whoever you’re thinking of sending, they’re going to die.” No ‘probably’, just a statement. There’s no sense in dressing it up.

Bucker shrugs. “If they had a problem with dying, they shouldn’t have joined up with us in the first place.” He grins. That’s ironic, seeing as the price for refusing to join when offered a place is death.

“Don’t send Bachem,” Arado points out. “He’ll just make an even bigger fuss, even if it'd be nice having him permanently shut up.”

“I _know_ , Arado, you don't have to tell me,” Bucker retorts, giving them an annoyed look.

“I'm just telling you ‘cause it looked like you were thinking about it…”

“Hawker and Hurricane will rub it in Donier’s face, Donier will brag to everyone about it while Focke and Wulf are too busy running patrols…” Daltos sighs. “Looks like it’s up to Siebel.”

The matter of having to pick a scout settled, on top of letting Arado and Bucker know (not having expected them to cooperate that easily), all that’s left is to consolidate the details of the deal with Sjin. Now he just has to let Arsenal know.

“Siebel’s alright,” Bucker says, sounding approving of his choice. “They’ll get it done in no time flat too.”

“Don’t mention it to the other Buzzard boys, they’ll just get jealous you're playing favourites and want in,” Arado dryly points out to Daltos. “Same goes for the other lieutenants.”

“I am _not_ playing favourites, certainly not with you,” Daltos grumbles. “This stays between the three of us.”

“You letting Arsenal know too?”

“He’ll get really fucking salty if I don't,” Daltos notes.

“Good luck with that,” Bucker says, giving a small shake of his head. “He wasn't looking too happy earlier. I think his leg must have played up badly yesterday and it still is.”

“I'll drop by Klemm’s and pick something up for him.” Bucker and Arado acknowledge this with cursory nods.

Daltos dismisses both of them once they leave the war room. He stays to roll up the map and tidy up the markers. About three hours have passed and he's really feeling the need for some food and drink. Coffee sounds appealing. 

He takes the quieter of the paths down to the cargo bay. There's a chance that some of Bachem’s lot want to thank him for showing the bastard who’s boss.

The sentiment is appreciated but if word goes back to Bachem about it? Once he's recovered, those bandits are likely to pay (and how dearly, since Bachem possesses a cruel streak to rival his own) for their cheek. That's not fair to them so Daltos is going to do them and himself a favor by avoiding the limelight.

He stops by Klemm’s medical bay to pick up some painkillers. Klemm hands them over without asking what they're for. Bachem is unconscious on a cot, their busted nose being set back in place. Daltos feels nothing (not even the tiniest bit of satisfaction) at the sight of them sprawled out, leaving after thanking Klemm.

Arsenal is chatting to Fieseler, the right side of his body leaning against the wall. When Daltos emerges from a side corridor into the empty bay, Arsenal spots him over Fieseler’s shoulder. Panic flits over his features for a moment as he moves off the wall and promptly excuses himself. 

Unfortunately, Daltos spots him, breaking into a light jog to close the distance between them.

If Fieseler is puzzled by the abrupt break in conversation, they don’t show it, simply stepping back to stay out of Daltos’ way, letting him pass without a fuss.

Arsenal's limp means he doesn't make it that far before Daltos catches up to him (see, he's not even out of breath, despite what they all say about the smoking).

“And where do you think you're _going_?” Arsenal slows down, forced to come to a complete stop when a grinning Daltos blocks his path.

“Oh, I didn't see you there,” Arsenal lies, failing to hide his own mirth (in the form of a smug, knowing smirk). “I got somewhere to be, so I ain't gonna bother you-” He tries to sidestep Daltos but Daltos just mirrors him. 

“It's midday, so why don't you come along and have lunch with me?” He proposes.

“I’d love to but as I said-” Not listening, Daltos has already moved behind him to latch onto his jacket with a gloved hand to shove him down the hall. 

“Nonsense, the more, the merrier!” It unnerves Arsenal that Daltos sounds cheerful (never a good sign). “Fieseler, you want to get some lunch too?” He yells, Arsenal struggling in vain to slip out of his hold on him.

“No but thanks, I'm waiting for Klemm!” They boom from the other side of the bay, breaking their usual manner of speaking.

“You know what they say, three's a crowd, two's company!” Daltos exclaims, turning back to his captive.

“That's not what you said five seconds ago!” When Daltos shoves forward, Arsenal digs his heels in. It's hard for Arsenal to get any purchase, since his left leg really doesn’t want to do shit that requires anything more than standing, so he's forced to let himself be moved along. “Daltos-” 

“Looks like it'll be just the two of us.” He's scaring him, actually, with how bright he’s sounding. 

Arsenal debates the merits of calling for help. He decides against it. The other lieutenants will probably just laugh at him and be unhelpful dicks.

At least they're not that far from the mess hall and kitchen. Daltos lets go of him, only to take him by the elbow. Rather than enter the hall, he takes them both around so they enter ‘facilities’.

It's empty at this hour, just as Daltos predicted. He sits Arsenal down onto one of the metal benches bolted to the floor. Arsenal is actually glad for the seat, his left leg well on its way to Soreville. He knows it's useless to run so he's forced to wait.

Daltos digistructs a pile of clothing that he shoves into one of the vacant washing machines. Once it's running, he turns back to Arsenal, no longer grinning. He looks calm. He probably isn't, on the inside. Arsenal gets up without a word, following him into the kitchen. 

The kitchen is busy, in comparison to the barren ‘facilities’ room, the low murmur of chatter and the buzz of more than ten conversations happening at once permeating the air.

Arsenal watches Daltos move around the kitchen, grabbing whatever he needs from the stores before returning to the microwave Arsenal's claimed for him in the meantime. 

The cup of noodles is unceremoniously shoved into the microwave. While that's cooking, he orders a mug of strong coffee from a nearby machine. Taking the filled mug, he returns just in time to hear the microwave ‘ding’. Daltos removes the noodles, now dragging Arsenal towards the mess hall. 

Some bandits hastily vacate a table once the two of them draw near. Sometimes it's nice to be recognised, Daltos thinks as he and Arsenal sit down, facing one another. 

The noodles are too hot so he ends up peeling the rest of the lid off to let steam escape. The wooden chopsticks are set aside. 

“You ain't adding skag meat?” Arsenal asks, having peered at his meagre meal. He's not judging, since it's hard to find rations that aren't bland, boring or a combination of both that'll last long and fill someone up for hours. Whether or not it's nutritious or tasty is something else.

“Meat looked a little off when I checked the stores,” Daltos observes, annoyed that it's another item to chase up on his list of things to do because he's the only responsible one around here. “I think somebody's not doing their kitchen duty properly.”

“I can look into it,” Arsenal volunteers without hesitation. Daltos eyes him with suspicion. He shrugs.

“If you're trying to make up for sending Cant to wake me, then that's a pretty shitty attempt,” Daltos says, his voice dropping to a threatening murmur. 

“Cant wanted to, it was basically their idea,” Arsenal points out, grinning. “They ran off before I could stop them and you know I can't exactly run with this bum leg.” Trust Arsenal to have a valid series of excuses prepared to cover his ass.

Daltos snaps the chopsticks in half, saying nothing to him. The noodles are still bland, even when he’d added everything that came in the flavour packets. The important part is that it's _edible_. His coffee’s warm and it still tastes as shit as it always does but it'll do. He can feel it kicking in when he's done eating. Already, he feels like he’d never woken up with a hangover. 

“You, er, going to eat anything else?” Arsenal looks taken aback when Daltos doesn't pull out anything else to eat.

“No?” That in turns surprises him. While Cant had been present, he hadn't been able to refill his inventory's supply of food, not wanting them to nick any once his back had been turned.

“Here,” Arsenal mutters, tossing over a ration bar. Daltos catches it, only to lob it back. It almost goes flying out of reach but Arsenal grabs it in time, saving it from hitting someone in the back of the head. 

“I feel bad for depriving you of your only guilty pleasure of the day,” Daltos says, letting a pitying look accompany his words. 

“Why are you making it sound _sad_?” Arsenal points out, returning the ration bar to his inventory. “There's nothing wrong with liking rations!”

“That's because it's _true_.”

“It is not _sad_.”

“Okay, it's not sad-”

“See, I knew you'd see reason eventually-”

“It's _pathetic_.”

“Those mean the same thing!”

“It's called a synonym, you fucking idiot-”

“Even an idiot like me can tell you that they're the _exact_ same thing!”

“You're too busy looking at guns to even pick up a book, so what would you know about synonyms?” Daltos counters as they both get up from the table. “They are _not_ the same thing!”

“They are!”

By this time, they've walked back into the laundry room so he can move his laundry into a free dryer. They're still arguing about it once the dryer has stopped, including when he's stuffing all his collected clothes back into his inventory and while proceeding to walk Arsenal back.

Their arguments are an often enough occurrence on the frigate that they don't draw curious glances from any bandits passing by. They reach Arsenal's lonely and sparsely furnished room located a metre or so off the main hallway, the door whooshing shut behind them.

“I still think I'm right,” Arsenal maintains, turning on the light. At this point, he's keeping up the denial just to wind Daltos up. 

“You are _not_ ,” Daltos retorts, well aware of what he's doing (and hating his dedication). 

It's a shame he's one of the only few people around who actually liked (and could read) books that aren't magazines or gun catalogues. Everybody else is either illiterate, indifferent or hated books. He knows that Arsenal falls into the second category despite being one of the lucky few bandits who could read. 

How else would he have lasted long enough to become a bridge crew member? 

It's also mandatory that anybody who enlists (whether they're forced to or not) in the Dahl military could read or could learn how to. If they didn't, well, tough luck, those who couldn't ended up falling between the cracks of the floorboards. Nobody cared about them or what happened afterwards.

It's a fucking waste. That had contributed in part to his growing dissatisfaction with Dahl. Dahl might not be a part of his life anymore, but he finds that its absence isn’t missed. Ironically, he keeps some of the useful policies alive in the way he runs his gang. 

For starters, the bit about everybody on board being entitled to necessities of life (barring jokes about sex, because that's how fucking immature Hawker and a few others liked to be, not to mention, also just plain wrong).

On his frigate, nobody ever went without having at least one job to do. Once that's done, they could do whatever (or whoever, heh) they want to do. It's not that hard and yet, why do his bandits fail to grasp the concept. Constantly.

Anyway, that's why he keeps Arsenal around, even if his lieutenant’s still in denial about _synonyms not being the exact same thing_. Despite his apparent harmlessness, Arsenal could kick any bandits who saw fit to laze around into gear, including the ones who could bludgeon him to death with one swing of their fist.

Also, Daltos has gotten sidetracked by their ridiculous argument. Now that he has Arsenal alone, he can properly talk to him now. Arsenal's since limped over to his bed and sat down, looking expectantly at him. 

“So, we’re all _alone_ , in my room,” He observes with a lecherous grin, patting the bed. 

Unimpressed, Daltos just strides over to smack him upside the head. Not as hard as he’d punched Bachem though. He doesn't need to send another lieutenant to Klemm, especially Arsenal of all people. “Let's talk,” He says.

Arsenal rubs the side of his head, wiping the grin off his face to look curious. “So, what do you want to talk about?”

“I went to Opportunity the other day.” Judging by his frown, he’s never heard of the place. “Do you know SipsCo.?”

“Can’t say I have,” Arsenal muses out loud, shrugging.

“One of the CEOs wants to send supplies over to help.”

“What's the catch?”

“A hundred bandits, all of them more or less worked to death or going nuts in the eridium mines.”

Arsenal is silent for the longest time with a neutral look on his face. “We don't have any choice, do we?” He finally says in a quiet, disdainful tone.

“I already agreed,” Daltos says, filing away the fact that Arsenal really doesn’t like the sound of Sjin. He doubts Sjin will ever contact Arsenal for anything, given Arsenal’s suspicion of dealing with outsiders who aren’t trusted allies.

“But you want my insight anyway.” A beat. “Deals like that make me uneasy,” Arsenal admits. “I understand why you accepted, though.” He still sounds disapproving.

“We need every advantage that we can get our hands on.” This earns a hesitant nod from him. “Towns can't be our only means of getting what we need if they're going to be little shits about it.” Not to mention the unpredictability of getting supplies from other sources, like other bandit gangs allied with them.

They might be the dominant gang around these parts but there's a few gangs who provide them with necessities (such as water, arable land, parts and munitions). They, the Blitzkrieg Blighters, can't risk attacking them or lose vital resources in the process.

If his plans have to include making a deal that sounds too good to be true, then so be it. 

“I need you to help out Arado with inventory and whatever else needs to be done. Bucker knows too but nobody else should.”

“Okay,” Arsenal breathes, still looking unhappy. Daltos gets that it'll take him a little longer than the other two to process the news. They've killed bandits before but usually not by their own machinations. “I'm not objecting, but please tell me you have a backup plan if it doesn't pan out.”

“I do,” Daltos reassures him, pulling out the painkillers to present them to Arsenal (who instantly perks up at getting an intact lot for once). “Here, don’t pop these all at once.”

At once, Arsenal pops one free. With a grin, he pops it into his mouth and swallows it with a swing of his canteen to wash it down. Daltos refrains from sighing or commenting about ‘intervention’.

“Thanks, I needed them after what happened yesterday.” There’s no ill will in Arsenal’s voice at the mere, deliberate mention of yesterday’s events between them.

That said, Daltos doesn't have to mention that his backup plan likely involves murder and robbing Sjin blind. On the other hand, he'd walked into Sjin’s office fully aware of how it might play out, but accepting that deal means getting another shot at finally completing his lifelong goal.

No, not the goal involving his eventual takeover of the east and west coast. He's referring to his hidden personal goal: fixing the frigate and getting its A.I. Core back so he can leave this planet.

\--

A week passes without a single peep from Bachem. Bachem’s nose is healing, albeit he's having to walk around with bandages wrapped around his face. As a result, he’s being more bad-tempered than usual. He's never disrespectful in front of Daltos, so that means the lesson has sunk in, to some degree.

Given their losses, Arado skillfully maneuvers the recruits out Bachem’s way. Most of them go under Bucker and Fieseler’s watches for the time being until Bachem’s cooled off.

There's still the possibility of coming under attack at any given moment so Daltos has been going to bed on edge and waking up more alert than usual, almost every sense primed for the slightest sign of danger in or near his room.

It's taking a toll on him, so he's been leaving more tasks than usual to his senior lieutenants (Arado, Arsenal, Bucker, Gotha and Hurricane). It's up to them if they want to split it amongst themselves and the lower ranked ones. He can trust them not to fuck up (usually).

They know to find or ECHO him straightaway if there's any problems. Surprisingly, there hasn't been a single call about that. That also leaves him more time to slip to an area of the frigate that’s his and his alone.

When the frigate had first crashed, one of the first things he'd done had been to secure the corridors leading to the engine rooms. Nobody else has the accesses required to reach this place once he'd tampered with the doors. 

Nestled at the very back of the frigate lies twin engines that once powered the whole warship. These days, they sit quietly, content to let Daltos use the solar generators rigged up on the roof instead. 

He doesn't want to risk further ruining the engines by constantly running them and draining what precious fuel he has stashed away.

The crash had taken out one of the engines. He’s been stuck on this planet for close to a full Pandoran year now (and counting), thanks to the disastrous actions of someone he thought would join him when it'd really mattered. He doesn't think much of the past, far too much occupying him presently to let his mind drift back that far. 

It's common knowledge amongst his lieutenants that he has several places he likes to sneak off to and smoke at.

One, the platforms where the Buzzards nest, up on the roof. Two, outside the frigate behind the shipping containers. Three, if he can't be bothered to walk to the first two areas, anywhere where the vents overlap (to carry the smoke away) will do. The corridors outside of the engine rooms are perfect. So really, it's not odd for him to hang around in the area.

He smokes, then puts out it out once there's enough of a residual smell in the air so everybody steers clear. Once he's sure there's nobody around, he turns around, opening the door and slips in. He always closes it behind him and makes sure it's always in working order.

At this point, he knows it’s futile to invest any more of his resources, time and energy into trying to bring the ruined engine back from the dead, but he’d be lying if he said that he hadn’t grown fond of the frigate over time. He’s so stupidly attached to the place that'd brought him more happiness than his home planet, and yet, had also taken so much from him. 

Taking the frigate away from him would mean having to pry it out of his cold, dead hands.

He considers this one goal a paradoxical waste of time and yet, this is where he goes whenever he has a few hours to kill. He doesn't come here everyday but often enough so that the rooms don't accumulate dust.

All the hours he's poured into cleaning them out, keeping them in top condition for that one day probably add up to at least a hundred days. At this point, he knows the engines inside and out, now as familiar to him like the inside of a technical or a Buzzard.

He once managed to bring the busted engine online for about thirty seconds before it coughed, emitting a high-pitched whine and promptly died. To this day, he still hasn’t figured out what went wrong. It’s not part of his expertise, tinkering around with engines of this magnitude and size. 

That’s what the last surviving captain specialises in; it’s also why he wants them captured _alive_.

He suspects it all comes down to the lack of an A.I. Core. The lack of an A.I. Core installed means that he has to rely on whatever repairs he makes, winging it by whatever overlaps from his mechanical degree and crap from all the textbooks and manuals he stole from one of the other captains’ rooms.

Again, he tries not to think about the owner of those books, pushing past that to try to understand whatever valuable knowledge he can glean from the pages. He keeps the books in a locked ammo box under a workbench in one of the adjacent rooms.

Still, to even get one online for thirty seconds had brought him a rush of adrenaline and a burst of pride he hadn’t felt in a long time (it’d felt pretty good, actually). It'd still been disheartening to hear it shut off.

The engines typically run so quietly (a fucking miracle by Dahl’s usual engineering standards) that for him to know they'd even come alive had been the outputs flashing across the monitor he'd jury rigged up to them.

Dahl also considers it extremely unsafe to let anyone climb into the engines unless they're qualified technicians. Dahl is also not in charge of him anymore so Daltos flips open a hatch, kicks down the ladder and climbs into the offline engine giving him so much trouble. 

He's been over every millimetre of these engines to try to narrow down what could be the problem. Today must be his lucky day or perhaps he's being more attentive than usual; he finds the source of it.

When he sees it, he wants to smash something into smithereens, waves of frustration, disappointment and bitterness crashing through him, one after another.

He is staring at a component affixed to the wall, at a part supposed to last for decades, even past how own lifetime. It's cracked in half and there is no way he can repair it, the crack is that clean. It's rare enough that he won't be able to find it sitting in any of Pandora’s junkyards and it's not like he can shove any other old part in or risk the engines permanently dying on him from the mismatch.

No idea how the split happened comes to mind. The frigate is older than him (nearing fifty years in age based on the logs), so he can chalk it up to just a stroke of bad luck.

Daltos climbs out, dragging up the ladder and closing the hatch, bolting it shut after. He packs up everything, shoving it all back into their usual places. He hasn't fooled around all that much so he can skip having to take a shower.

He spends an hour rather than the usual fifteen minutes smoking outside the engine rooms, letting himself feel whatever mix of emotions wash over him. It vacillates between the ones from before and self-hate for not having spotted the problem earlier. Maybe he could have even prevented it. 

There's no way of telling (again, fuck the lack of an A.I. Core) so he just lets that thought pass.

His lieutenants leave messages on his ECHO that go unanswered. They're free to assume he's napping or attending to other matters they have no part of. If he asks any of them for help, he knows that they'll just think he's too ambitious or finally cracked from all the stress. Not even Arsenal has a clue what he's doing.

In the past, there'd been a few vocal people who'd originally thought he wouldn't get this far in accumulating that much territory in a month, let alone live that long. If he’s proven those fuckers dead wrong before, then he can do it again by fixing this frigate.

No invested ambition of his is going to be wasted, especially not after all this time. 

Right, that's an hour he's wasted on stewing in his own misery. Daltos gets to his feet, not putting out his cigarette until he makes it to one of the airlocks. That done, he heads off to see if Bucker is ready to set off on another campaign. 

The matter with the frigate is pushed to the back of his mind but not quite out of reach.

\--

\- // STANDBY…

FILE RETRIEVAL SUCCESSFUL…

REWINDING...

RESUMING ECHO LOG PLAYBACK // -

Daltos: So, what you're telling me is, according to your friend, it'll run me a hundred thousand to get a hold of this part?

Blohm: Yeah, sorry but he can't get you a discount since they got to make it on demand and it ain't easy. Also, given where we’re based-

Voss: Shipping to Pandora will run you even more; we’re talking another thousand bucks, since this part is like a delicate glass vase.

Daltos: ...That took an unexpected turn right at the end. 

Voss: What, did you think I was about to say ‘like a person’s delicate bits?’

Daltos: Yes. You can't digistruct this either?

Blohm: Well, digistructing it takes some mighty advanced machines that we don't have up here at the vulture factories-

Voss: Our current setups suck, is what he's saying. That part’s also bloody complicated, going by the blueprint and we might fuck up the assembly since each part needs some fine cutting-

Blohm: You need even more machines to do all that. Only a machine’s got the right precision and eye to do it. All we got up here’s two blokes who know how to cobble together flying machines of death out of spare parts, second and third hand digistruct systems and whatever’s lying around-

Voss: One of those said blokes can't even finish a jigsaw puzzle unless it's part of a machine-

Blohm; I'll have you know that said puzzle was missing a piece! 

Voss: So best to let somebody more qualified tackle it. 

Blohm: Anyway, you still want us to place the order for you-

Voss: Assuming you got that much dough lying around-

Blohm: I'll even tell my mate to package it extra carefully, just for you.

Voss: I was about to say that! So, what'll it be?

Daltos: Sorry, I'm going to hold off on the order. I don't even have close to that much saved up.

Blohm: Oh, that's a real shame. This part’s a beaut.

Voss: You still haven't told us why you're suddenly so interested in buying it. You normally just like collecting old parts, not buying them. 

Daltos: What can I say, I have expensive taste.

Voss: Bloody good taste, I’ll say.

Blohm: Well, I can always try to cut a cheaper deal with my mate. I’ll keep you posted.

Daltos: Thanks. How are the new Buzzards coming along?

Voss: Still ironing out the kinks, I'm afraid. We’re also waiting for Focke and Wulf to get back to us on how the new engines and turret hold up under fire…

Daltos: Hawker also calls dibs on the first lot manufactured. I think he wants to rub it into the rest of the Buzzard’s boys faces.

Blohm: Sure, why not? We’ll help him compensate.

Daltos: I fucking knew you were about to say that. 

\- // USER HAS ENDED PLAYBACK // -

\--

Midway through the meeting, Sjin notices that the despondent air hasn't left Daltos yet. He's said hardly a word of his own that isn't in response to any of Sjin’s observations. When he does respond, it's in a curt, subdued tone. It’s such a striking contrast to his blunt, caustic manner of speaking that it’s a little worrying.

If Sjin didn't know any better, he’d say Daltos is distracted. By what, he doesn't know but it's making the meeting proceed in an awkward, ambling way. Sjin finds that he doesn't mind in the slightest, inwardly pleased that there's another side to him that he gets to see. It’s reassuring to know that there’s actually a person inside of the exterior that exudes ‘bandit, stay away’.

Daltos seems to be aware of the effect he’s having, heaving a sigh and says, “Sorry, didn't catch that.”

Sjin smiles and despawns the map of Pandora from where he'd been going over his plans (for the third time) in setting up the mines before the bandits get sent over. He leans forward, both elbows resting on his desk. 

“You feeling alright?” He is genuinely concerned, willing to take a calculated risk in asking him directly about it. “If there's anything that's troubling you, you can tell me about. I won't blab to anyone.” 

The sincerity in his eyes (huh, they’re a dull brown, like his own) gives Daltos pause. He wants to have a smoke right _now_ to alleviate his restlessness. What’s stopping him? 

They've only known each for five weeks (this being their umpteenth or so meeting), so he feels as if he’d just be conforming to the stereotype about bandits being rude if he starts to smoke without giving Sjin any prior warning. 

It's also been a more than week since the conversation with Blohm and Voss about buying the part he so desperately needs. 

That and Bucker’s having problems with Bachem, who seems intent of charging off on his own and stacking up casualties on both sides with his pigheadedness. It's upsetting for Bucker, who doesn't like his carefully laid out plans dashed by one idiot’s stupidity. 

Despite Gotha, Fieseler and Cant’s presences supposedly keeping him in check, Bachem seems intent on carving his own path out to the front lines, even through his own or another lieutenant’s bandits. 

So that’s hit their reserve units and supplies hard as they've had to ferry those over if they want to maintain the pressure on the gang they're fighting. When Daltos had pressed, wanting to know how their supplies and troops are faring, Arado had conceded that they might have to rely on Sjin’s promise of help sooner than expected.

Daltos will either have to call this one campaign off or keep pushing and hope that their supplies will somehow last, _and_ Bachem stops being an asshole. There is a slim chance they can pull it off but the odds of that aren't pretty.

He might even have to persuade Arado and several others to drag their units into the fray, as a last resort. That area they’re hitting up is a potential foothold, paving the way for future campaigns on the west coast.

In contrast, Sjin’s been proving himself significantly more reasonable than his lieutenants. Whatever criticisms Daltos gives him, he takes it in stride. Sometimes it even has an obvious result on Sjin’s plans by their next meeting. The same goes in reverse.

He doesn't like opening up about his problems to someone else, too used to keeping them bottled up. There's always Arado and Arsenal willing to lend an ear but there's a limit as to how much he can share with those two before he feels like he's overstepping the boundaries of their relationship (even if Arsenal is his best friend).

Sjin has also been incredibly patient and forthcoming so far with him. He’s not a bandit either so the usual rules don't apply. Fine, Daltos will bite (and hope it doesn't result in a future backlash).

“I might need those supplies sooner than I thought,” He admits. There’s a pregnant pause as Sjin regards him with a steadiness that Daltos wishes that some of his more headstrong lieutenants possessed.

“Daltos, you know you can always ask for those and additional supplies anytime, right?” Sjin is already tapping out instructions on his ECHO device to Sherlock. “Our deal’s been good for a while now. You don't have to hold back in asking for help.” He is genuinely surprised that Daltos hadn't asked him sooner. Perhaps he hadn't been clear enough?

Sjin takes his hand off his ECHO device, his smile having returned. Daltos uncrosses his arms from over his chest, feeling a giant burden slide off his stiff shoulders with that matter now dealt with. 

He hadn't wanted to ask for help, worrying that requests just probably incur an equivalent price later on, under the distinct impression that every offer would require him handing over more bandits. He’s glad to know that his worst fears are batted away with that assurance.

Sjin chuckles, appearing to sense his concern. “I did say ‘ _anything_ ’ for those hundred bandits, which means virtually unlimited supplies and whatever else you care to ask for.”

“I didn't think you actually meant it,” Daltos bluntly remarks.

“Well! I can't blame you.” Sjin leans forward. “It is after all, your first time dealing with a businessman so you're inexperienced.” There's a cheeky twinkle in his eye. “How are you finding the experience so far?”

“Better than I expected. You haven't backstabbed me yet, so that earns you brownie points,” Daltos says, picking up his bottle of rakk ale to take a swing from it. 

“I'm _very_ glad to hear that.” Sjin lifts up his glass of red wine to mimic him (and Daltos notes that he hasn't touched the rakk ale again, not since their second meeting). “You still seem troubled,” He lightly points out after.

“Have you ever seen my stronghold?”

“No, I haven't,” Sjin lies with a straight face. He had done some investigation in regards to his choice of which Bandit Lord to deal with, which included checking what their stronghold consists of. The frigate is rather impressive, compared to the rest that are dwarfed in comparison.

“It's a military class Dahl frigate. It was in active service until it succumbed to Pandora’s orbit due to critical engine failure roughly a Pandoran year ago, Daltos dryly recites. There’s more to that story but he’s not lying if he’s just omitting facts that are of little importance to the current subject. “I've been trying to fix the engine that failed ever since.” There, it’s now out in the open.

“Did you succeed?”

“Not yet,” Datos says, “I'm getting there, but.” It's here that something (Sjin can’t quite tell what) flashes within his gaze. 

“Butttt?” An intrigued Sjin drawls out, earning an exasperated sound from him.

“One of the parts I need to buy costs about a hundred thousand, plus a little more.” Daltos gives Sjin a pained look. 

It takes Sjin a moment to figure out that he doesn't like asking for _anything_ , especially if it means having to force him to swallow his pride. 

What is going on over at that frigate of his that makes him so guarded about almost everything? Well, a hundred thousand isn't that much to Sjin but he knows it matters a lot more to others less fortunate than him.

“Oh, _Daltos_ ,” Sjin sighs. “You should know by now that I’m a man of my word.” He picks up his ECHO to dial Sherlock this time.

Sherlock answers on the first ring. “Sir?”

“I’d like you to prepare a million dollars in one of the silver suitcases,” Sjin delivers with as much enthusiasm that's humanly possible. Wait, _what_? Daltos blinks, trying to process the amount that Sjin’s just asked Sherlock to prepare.

“When do you need it by?” Sherlock is so used to the random demands that he just sounds matter-of-fact about it. There’s almost a deadpan quality to his voice (it sounds like he’s barely keeping it from his voice to avoid offending Sjin, however).

“Right now,” Sjin says. Daltos can hear the grin in his voice.

That has Sherlock make a choking, incredulous sound, breaking whatever calm facade he’s wearing. “Right now? Sir, that’s-”

“Please have that done and waiting by the time I finish my meeting with Daltos,” Sjin cheerfully explains. He cuts the call on Sherlock’s spluttering.

“You sure like to torment that secretary of yours,” Daltos wryly observes, now having finished reigning in his shock at Sjin having just dropped a million dollars (far more than he’d ever expected, let alone even agreed to do so) into his lap.

“Sherlock will be _fine_ ,” Sjin dismissively says, putting away his ECHO device. Sherlock will get it done, even if his order is unreasonable, because Sherlock is amazing like that (and would also like to keep his well paying, cushy job). “I hope that's more than enough to cover shipping as well?” He raises a questioning eyebrow.

“With that much, I can probably finally fix the hull plating with whatever's left over…” Daltos is already thinking of how he can allocate the money.

He will definitely have to make sure Bachem and the greedy ones never find out. How should he keep all that money safe? He can't go around carrying that much on him. That notion is just inviting trouble.

There's a place near Arsenal’s room that once housed military intelligence, easy enough to fix up and convert into a secure vault. They can move the rest of their existing funds into it too. Arsenal and Klemm can keep an eye on it.

He won’t have to worry about bothering towns for supplies, not when he can finally get a ration subscription and allocation going for everyone, including himself.

Meanwhile Sjin can't help but notice that it's the first time in weeks that Daltos actually seems _happy_. There's not a trace of tension anywhere on his face. 

He usually came to these meetings on edge. It takes over half an hour for it even begin to bleeding away before he seems remotely relaxed. The alcohol helps a little. It’s rare that Daltos ever downs more than a single bottle, not since the second meeting. Sjin drinks up to three glasses of wine, in comparison.

That said, much to Sjin’s irritation, Daltos always goes for the rakk ale. Sjin doesn’t get why he keeps choosing the foul stuff. There’s far superior and better tasting drinks to pick from, like his own home brewed concoctions. Daltos’ choice reminds Sjin of someone, with a pang of heartache.

At their second meeting, the rakk ale Sjin had drank had tasted even worse than he’d initially thought; what's impressive is that Daltos hadn't even made a face, even continuing to drink it after. Sjin had just set aside his after that one swing, the afterburn leaving an unpleasant warm sensation akin to swallowing hot oil that took forever to settle.

Also, how Daltos behaves (in that usual careful, guarded manner of his) makes Sjin wonder if the grey streak in his hair is natural, though. All that stress can’t be good for him. 

He’d offer a shoulder massage as a joke but is sure that Daltos will just think he’s gone nuts; he certainly isn’t reacting to the coyness in Sjin’s voice when other people would have taken a hint.

That initial attempt had been rebuffed. Sjin’s just sure he’s either deliberately ignoring it or he hasn’t picked up on it. It hasn’t been that long since they met so he’ll just have to keeping figuring out what makes Daltos tick.

“Thank you,” Daltos eventually says. His thanks is quiet and genuine. Sjin tucks it into the corner of his memory for safe-keeping.

“Don’t mention it,” Sjin replies, waving a hand like it’s not a big deal. “Should we stop for today?” He’s tired of going over the mine’s plans and is sure Daltos isn’t in the mood for it either. 

Maybe he should suggest sending Sherlock over as an accountant at some point if he's having trouble with finances. That's a terrible idea (what with Sherlock’s fear of just one bandit, let alone proposing setting foot into a stronghold full of them), so Sjin considers hiring an accountant who is not afraid of them for triple the pay.

“Yeah. I don’t think I can absorb anything else.” At least Daltos sounds apologetic about it, on top of being honest.

“That’s quite alright. We’ve both had a long day. Why not unwind for a bit before you head home?” Sjin motions with a careless flick of his hand to the half-empty bottle of rakk ale on his desk. “So, got any personal plans in mind?” 

Business matters set aside for the time being, he’s also been working towards getting to know Daltos on a more personal level after every meeting. 

Daltos hasn’t shown any inclination to dissuade him, proving rather indulgent so far. Sjin gets the mutual sense that neither of them want to return home for the time being. The problem he now faces is that Daltos has a habit of being vague about his own life that Sjin has to really work to get something of a concrete answer out of him. 

That’s fine, Sjin relishes a challenge or else that’d just take all the fun out of it.

“Fixing the frigate. It’ll take a while for the part to get sent over, but I can make a start on getting things set up elsewhere,” Daltos says. That’s half of a proper answer from him for once, so Sjin considers that as progress. Even if it's baby steps, one at a time will do.

“I doubt that qualifies as a hobby,” Sjin points out in a questioning tone.

“Fine, what about _your_ hobbies?”

“Well, I like collecting antique guns and items.” Sjin nods towards one of the glass cabinets along one wall of his office.

Even at a casual glance, Daltos can tell that even just one of those guns is worth more than the amount Sjin’s just gifted him. There's a vintage Atlas sniper rifle and a shotgun perched on glass racks, plus some others items (a shield that looks like bandits had put together plus other assorted junk) below them that Daltos can't quite see from where he’s sitting.

“It doesn't count as a hobby unless you're actually doing something.” 

“I also like microbrewing,” Sjin says with a modest look. 

Daltos surveys him with a cruel glint in his eyes. “Are you doing it just so you can say you're doing it or are you doing it because you like doing it?”

“That was too many ‘doings’ in one sentence.” 

He isn't that drunk as to have missed Sjin evading his question. “I’m just going to go with the former, seeing as you haven't answered.”

“Well, most of the time it just turns out bad, but-” Sjin concedes, unable to stop himself flushing at having to admit that he’s not as good at it as he’d like to be.

Daltos starts laughing, much to Sjin’s irritation. “I fucking knew it, you're a poser.”

“What would _you_ fucking know?” Sjin hotly retorts, snapping his mouth shut and mildly horrified at having let his temper get the better of him.

Daltos only smirks, raising an eyebrow at him. “It's okay to swear at me. Half my lieutenants don't even dare so it's a nice change instead of being the one swearing.”

“I don't want it to become a habit.”

“Why not unwind for a bit?” Dalton quotes as he holds up the bottle of rakk ale to back up his point. “If you feel like swearing, go for it. I'm not going to be offended.”

“Thanks, and sorry,” Sjin says in a small voice.

“Don’t worry about it.” Daltos shrugs. “Also, it won't change the fact you’re a poser.”

“You are _mean_ ,” Sjin says with a look of pure regret for opening his mouth in the first place.

“Being nice never got me anywhere,” Daltos observes with a hint of disdain in his voice at the notion.

\--

Feeling that he’s stumbling into the waiting, menacing jaws of a beast, Sjin at last, digistructs at the Dahl Headland. His view of the world spins, the dizziness abating within a few seconds.

His head comes up to survey his surroundings (never having set foot in any territory outside of Opportunity before, not without an escort) with an alertness belonging to a skittish creature realising that jaws are about to snap shut on it.

Instead of jaws, what startles Sjin is the sound of a technical horn blaring several metres away to his right. Of course he’d jump, almost hitting his head on the metal roof sheltering any travelers from the punishing heat of the sun overhead. 

A waiting Daltos smirks from the driver’s seat upon the glare Sjin shoots at him. Daltos takes the cigarette out of his mouth to sardonically greet him with, “Over here, or would you like to keep admiring the scenery?”

Sjin drags a reassuring hand through his own hair, trying to pretend that he’s (mostly) unruffled at having been scared almost out of his skin. 

The vehicle Daltos is driving draws his attention, distracting him from snapping back with something witty.

It’s the strangest ride Sjin’s ever seen, an elaborate patchwork of metal welded and bolted together in a crude shape of a truck’s front, body and back, supported by four large wheels. There’s no roof so he wonders what Daltos does when it rains; there's a roll of something like tarp tied onto the vehicle’s side, under a panel with ‘TOOLS’ that looks like it’d been scratched on top with a nail.

Most bizarre to him is the contraption taking up the space just over Daltos’ right shoulder. Smoke from the cigarette he’s holding curls up and away. 

The contraption looks like a gun of sorts? But it's not like any gun he's ever seen before, the barrel too flat, pancake-shaped. There's a slit-like opening along the front. The rest of it rests on a thin metal stalk that runs deeper into the vehicle. 

“What is _that_?” When Daltos looks at him in mild confusion, Sjin points.

“Oh, that's the buzzsaw turret.” With a sudden devious glint in his eyes that Sjin doesn't like the look of, Daltos puts the cigarette back in his mouth. One of his hands disappears under the dashboard to manipulate some sort of mechanism Sjin can't see. 

The turret swings around to point straight at Sjin, firing off a spinning buzzsaw that'd have cleaved him in half-had Daltos not aimed it at the ground past him instead. It pings as it ricochets, harmlessly coming to a stop on the ground by some rocks.

“That was uncalled for!” Sjin spits out, unable to believe that he’d come so close to death (forgetting about the shield he’d painstakingly picked out for this trip). 

Daltos just makes a derisive sound, tossing the spent cigarette out of the vehicle. “That wouldn't have hit you, not unless you moved at the last second.”

“How was I supposed to _know_ that?” Sjin crosses his arms over his chest, his jaw set regardless of whether or not Daltos can see it under his beard. Curiosity wins out a moment later. “What is that thing you’re driving, anyway? It looks like a bunch of plastered stalkers put it together.”

Now that insult earns him an actual laugh from Daltos. “This _thing_ is called a ‘technical’, and it's the most reliable ride anyone can have in these parts,” He says with a hint of pride. 

“It looks like it's about to fall apart any second!” Is Sjin going to have to get in the thing? He is, isn't he. 

“Hey, if I had a limousine, I would have rocked up here to pick you up in it if that’d have satisfied you,” Daltos retorts. “Maybe I should have taken a Buzzard instead, those never fail to impress.”

Is Daltos referring to the equally crudely constructed aerial deathtraps he’s so fond of, that his bandits like to flit around in? That would have been so much worse than the thing he’s currently driving. 

“Where's your usual escort?”

“Lazy pricks didn't want to come along on their day off.”

“Oh, I didn't realise you gave them days off. That's very kind of you.”

“Only if I'm about to murder them so they can dig their own grave,” Daltos says with the return of his smirk. He gives no other indication that he's joking.

“That's a little...morbid.” Sjin’s sense of propriety is still being personally affronted by the technical’s roughened appearance, no matter how reliable Daltos says it is. “Surely you're not expecting me to get _in_ ,” He says, intending it as a joke. 

Daltos sits up to throw a pointed glance around him before slumping back down in the driver’s seat. “Well, I _could_ go back to the frigate and pick you up in a Buzzard instead-”

“Never mind! I'll take my chances.” Sjin hastily says, moving around the technical to see how he can climb up. There's no visible handholds or anything; he has the option of clambering on via the back or up and over the other side. Either way is not the slightest bit graceful. 

“You know, if you take any longer, the scythids will start to nibble at your feet,” Daltos drawls when he feels Sjin is taking his sweet time. 

That has the desired effect of the technical rocking slightly as he hears Sjin clamber up and into the turret, awkwardly positioning himself on the seat there.

“I'm in,” Sjin lets him know, sounding both nervous and astonished at his own daring.

“Hope you aren't afraid of a little speed,” is all the ample warning Daltos gives before yanking the handbrake down, reversing out and slamming on the accelerator to swing the technical back towards the road, all in the span of several seconds. 

The engine roars, the sound thrumming along and into his bones, eliciting a little thrilling kick of adrenaline.

Sjin is embarrassed by the startled, helpless noise escaping him at the random burst of speed, noise and motion under and around him; before he knows it, there's wind in his hair, his eyes watering. Somehow, he’s managed to right himself, now peering at the endless expanse of arid scrubland they're passing through.

All the scenery is zipping past as to become nothing more than streaks of color and rendering landmarks as indistinct, blurry shapes. There’s no speed limit in these lawless lands, much to his horror. His sense of self-preservation is offended at the lack thereof but soon takes a backseat to how much he finds how exhilarating it is, to simply leave all of his worries by the roadside and live in the moment.

The feeling of not needing to talk is mutual. Sjin doesn't feel chatty for once, focused on absorbing the experience as fully as he can, and Daltos can concentrate on driving, wanting nothing but the same thing, helped out the sound of the engine and wind drowning out his thoughts before reality catches up to him and reminds him of its existence. 

A dark shape on the horizon breaks the monotony of the land ahead of them. It’s the frigate. From what Sjin can make of it, it’s set in a barren clearing between a bunch of canyons and cliffs too sheer to scale, penned in by protective rock walls on all but one side. 

Smaller outcroppings from its landing had reduced others that’d gotten in the way of its landing to debris. Only a smattering of rocky protrusions still rise up, fortunate to have survived due to being placed further out. 

A trench from the landing is carved into the ground underneath the frigate, long since smoothed over by time and weather. The warship sits vertically without tilting to either side, a testament to the piloting skills of whoever had guided it down to its resting place.

The frigate itself is a desolate, dark green color stained a drab grey in places where the plating hadn't been replaced yet. Where old plates had been switched out, the color there is bolder, shining as the sunlight hits the metal. Sjin can make out tiny figures suspended from ropes and platforms strung up along the sides, Buzzards busy with lugging plates up from stacks placed along the ground to them.

It looks like Daltos hadn’t wasted any time getting to work (under the pretense of finally dealing with the problem of leaks and drafts). Sjin likes that. 

The frigate’s other imperfections become clear as they draw closer, made worse by the presence of bandits living in and around it. Sjin keeps his mouth shut, not wanting to offend Daltos on his own turf. He is a distinguished guest (possibly the most distinguished Daltos has ever had) and he'll act like one.

He does regret coming on his own though. Some of the looks thrown his way aren’t exactly friendly. Unless they’re directing the looks at Daltos instead? Something glints in the sky above their heads as they speed up the lone road leading into the clearing.

“Daltos, incom-” Sjin begins, shattering the silence.

Spotting it, Daltos tries to swerve out of the way, only for the lobbed barrel to explode as it hits the ground next to them. The impact flips the technical, throwing Sjin out of the turret. 

He ends up rolling across the ground until he comes to a sudden stop on his side, his ears ringing. His shield had held up, protecting him from the worst of it; its charge is drained almost completely though, 3% flashing at him in the corner of his HUD.

After five seconds of nothing happening, the charge slowly regenerates with a leisurely hum. Sjin lifts his head and shakily sits up, only to see the chaos of a mutiny in full swing, gunfire erupting from all directions around him. He crawls behind a shipping container, glad that nobody’s taking notice of him.

The technical’s wreckage is strewn ten or so metres back. There’s no sign of Daltos near it. Sjin hopes that he’s not dead, huddling down and willing his ears to stop _that_. He’s got his own guns on him. If he really has to, he could digistruct reinforcements or shoot, but he’d rather not let it come to that.

The bandits are occupied with firing indiscriminately on one another. He’s well in the thick of it. Sooner or later, they’ll turn on him. Until then, he’s going to try to be as inconspicuous as possible.

Twenty or so metres behind the destroyed technical, Daltos can feel hands on him, tugging on his shoulders and arm. Someone is picking him up to sling him over a set of shoulders, hauling him out of the worst of the danger.

Everything hurts; it feels like he’s just been hit by a speeding Monster. He’s bleeding from somewhere. It’s hard to focus on narrowing down where since there’s so much pain jarring him with every step whoever is carrying him takes. At least his ears have stopped ringing so that he can make out the familiar sound of gunfire and battle well under way.

His world is fading in and out, enough for him to really worry about passing out before his mind and body take offense and set themselves straight. It’s nothing he can't handle. He can feel someone setting him down on his feet at last, with surprising gentleness (he feels that he’s undeserving of it, given the kind of person he is).

He blinks to find Cant staring at him, their eyes of their mask unblinking. He reacts by gently shoving them away, feeling blood flow down his arm. It sticks to the inside of his jacket’s sleeve, wetting his palm under his glove.

“I’m fine,” Daltos mutters. Cant lets out a worried moan, gesturing to his shoulder.

Behind a crate, a helmeted Arado is frisking through brand new supplies for a medkit, items flying over their shoulders to be left out on the ground. Gotha is a few metres away out in the open, bellowing orders and rallying whoever hadn't been caught off guard in that eerie, dissonant voice of theirs.

“I want their heads so I can strip the flesh from them, hollow them out and use them as bowling balls! We take no prisoners!” A rallying cry from their unit goes up in response. Daltos can leave Gotha to it, they’ve got this under control. 

Cant grows frantic at his lack of concern regarding the bit of charred metal protruding from his left shoulder. It’s shredded straight through his jacket to embed into his skin and beyond. “Cant!” They whisper (it comes out as a shout anyway).

“I’ll deal with it later,” Daltos says, earning an exasperated sigh from Cant. He can feel the metal catch and drag on whatever it’s caught on (maybe a bit of muscle, it’s hard to tell when the pain isn't more localised but spread out along the joint). He’s annoyed that's another one of his jackets being torn up, though.

Short Stirling saunters over, the miniature Goliath appearing to cast an unapproving glance over at the lot causing trouble.

“I got reports of three ringleaders, all from that last campaign,” They boom. “You look like shit right now. What kind of torture did you put yourself through?” They add after a slight pause, noticing the wound on his shoulder as well.

“Good to see you too, Stirling,” Daltos dryly says. “Are they all together?”

“Nah, one of them got separated over there.” They jerk a thumb over their shoulder, towards another scene in the opposite direction. “My lot's trying to wreck the barricades they’ve set up.”

Daltos peers over at Gotha, who is gaining little ground. “Cant, get your unit and hit those fuckers from behind while Gotha’s being a distraction.” Cant hesitates at leaving him, shaking their head in defiance. Daltos firmly insists, “I got Arado and Stirling with me, so _go_.”

Arado gives up on finding a medkit, swearing under their breath. “Nothing but food and drink in here.” Spotting Cant’s reluctance to leave, Arado helpfully adds, “Don't worry Cant, nothing ain't happening to him while I'm here.”

Reassured, Cant affectionately nudges Arado in the shoulder as they pass, their buzzaxe digistructing in their good hand. They pause beside Stirling, offering their mangled arm to them. 

“Uh-uh, I ain't climbing up, not after you tripped and threw me off last time,” Stirling grumbles, refusing with a rattling shake of their helmet.

“Cant,” Cant insists with an apologetic toss of their head.

Stirling looks at Daltos. He nods, keeping a poker face. Usually, it's the psychos riding the Goliath's shoulders, not the other way around. “Cant will need the cover.”

With an annoyed sigh, Stirling climbs up Cant’s arm, using their cast as a makeshift ladder until they sit on Cant’s shoulder. One of their hands latch onto one of the leather straps on the back of Cant’s head. Their other hand digistructs a Vladof assault rifle, lifting it up, the barrel spinning in preparation.

“Cant,” Cant happily says now that their passenger is on board.

“Let’s fucking go already,” Stirling grouses, right as Cant moves.

Cant lets out an incomprehensible scream as they break into a run towards the traitors. The traitors are defended by a circular wall of technicals firing on Gotha (the buzzsaws and bullets do nothing to them, bouncing off harmlessly but their unit is being torn up). 

A few seconds later, psychos pour out of containers, airlocks, tents, anything that serve as homes. 

Each of them are toting buzzaxes and if not, something equally sharp and pointy, all the better to bludgeon their victims to death. Adding to all that is half of Stirling’s unit, a ragtag bunch of tenacious Marauders covering them with gunfire.

Now that Cant and Stirling are gone, Arado turns to him. “What do we do? You can't stay here, it's too open.”

“Well, Scarface, we go and take out the traitor behind us,” Daltos simply says, drawing his SMG and checking that his shield has fully recharged. Arado follows suit with an acknowledging grunt. The two of them run off in the opposite direction. “By the way, have you seen Sjin?”

Sjin is still hiding when a screaming, two metre tall beast of a bandit tears past with a miniature Goliath (firing bullets the entire time) hanging onto their shoulder. A horde of psychos stampede after them, right into the fray. Sjin blinks, deciding that he is going to need a drink after this. 

“There you are,” Daltos says, sounding relieved to find him. Sjin starts, stopping himself from digistructing anything once he sees it’s just Daltos. 

Daltos grins at him, still doing his best to ignore the muted, stabbing sensation in his shoulder plus the multiple bruises forming on his back, arms and legs from being thrown out of the technical. 

He hadn't been able to grab the shield booster he’d needed in the struggle to figure out what'd just happened. Cant had basically found him and hauled him behind cover. He’ll have to pay them back later for that.

Sjin’s eyes travel to the wound on Daltos’ shoulder, then down his arm. A jolt of nausea strikes him at the item Daltos is carrying in one hand, his glove and arm stained all the way up to his elbow with a slickness Sjin is unfortunately, all too familiar with.

The human head is still trailing blood at the sawn off stump that’d once been a neck. The head’s expression is set in the scream of someone in the last throes of a painful and drawn out death.

Sjin chooses not to ask about it. Besides, Daltos doesn't bother. 

“Tour’s canceled, Sjin. I got a mutiny to deal with,” He says, his lieutenant continuing to fire on anybody who’s shooting at them.

“I can _see_ that,” Sjin responds, succeeding in not sounding testy or frightened. He’s still shaken up, flinching with every distant explosion.

With a distracted glance, Daltos notices he’s still crouched. “Scarface, help him up, I got my hands full here,” He orders. Someone fires at him. He lifts his SMG to fire back, the shots stopping when he scores a direct hit. 

With a hand much cleaner than Daltos’, the helmeted Marauder hauls Sjin to his feet  
“You alright?” Scarface grunts. Sjin doesn't understand why they're called that until he catches sight of a scarred chin under the helmet. Oh.

“My shield held up, but do you think we could move to somewhere a little less open?” Sjin inquires. Most of the gunfire has actually increased as both sides continue to clash.

“Nah, we’re good here,” Daltos disagrees, the head of the bandit he’s holding vanishing into his inventory. Sjin’s just glad his nausea disappears with it.

“Aren’t you in pain right now? Your shoulder looks really bad.” Sjin checks if he has an Anshin syringe on him so he can offer it. Regrettably, his inventory says otherwise; he should really fix that.

Daltos turns his head to survey Sjin with evident amusement. “Never seen a wound before? This is just a scratch.” The casual way he’s shrugging off a critical injury is both alarming and awe-inspiring (to Sjin, at any rate). 

“Arsenal tells me they ain’t willing to negotiate,” Arado informs Daltos in a calm voice. 

“Can’t be helped, then.” Daltos lifts a hand in the customary gesture for ECHOing someone. “This is Daltos, commanding Hellfire Incarnate, to initiate fire mission at coordinates...” He rattles off a series of numbers that make no sense to Sjin before adding, “Try to avoid blue on blue and prepare to standby to engage remaining hostiles. Affirmative, Daltos out.”

“I understood absolutely none of that,” Sjin says. Only one in every three words had stood out.

“You don’t need to, but we got to move out of range,” Daltos crisply says, reloading his SMG.

“Of what?” Sjin still doesn't get what he’s referring to.

“Airstrike.” Daltos moves out of cover, blood still pouring down from his shoulder. His lieutenant covers their escape, gesturing for Sjin to follow.

“ _Airstrike_?” Sjin hurriedly follows Daltos and Scarface, breaking into a run as they also do so. He doesn’t dare look back in fear of tripping. 

Someone grabs his arm and hauls him behind cover, another shipping container further away. Really, all this running around is ruining his current set of clothes with all the sweat and dirt he’s getting on them. Now there’s _blood_ on it too.

Five heart-pounding seconds later, shadows in the sky drift overhead in a loose formation, the pilots letting out excited shouts of warning. A second of perfect silence exists between the bombs falling and their detonation. The ground shakes as explosions ring out, a dust cloud sweeping over them that has Sjin coughing. Daltos lets go of his arm, peering out of cover to ECHO the Buzzards overhead.

There’s nothing left of the technicals but smoking craters, debris, bodies and metal wreckage strewn around the impact sites. Even if the dust has yet to settle, bandits are already picking through the mess for loot and tending to the fallen or wounded.

“How was _that_? Take that Hawker, I scored more hits than you!” Someone yells overhead, following it up with a cackling, triumphant laugh.

“Fuck off Donier, you did not! At least my bombs hit first!” Someone else yells back, wheeling around in their Buzzard to shake a fist at them.

“Knock it off, you two. Do a sweep for survivors and take them out as well. Otherwise, can affirm no hostiles left from where I’m standing. Daltos out.” To Sjin, Daltos sounds pleased as he says, “Huh, looks like it worked.”

“What do you mean it _worked_?” Sjin watches the Buzzards overhead (with new reason to fear them) zoom away, both pilots still arguing. The others fall in behind them, scanning the impact site for any stragglers.

“I’ve always wanted to see if I could call an airstrike this close to the frigate,” Daltos admits without any shame whatsoever in his voice. The SMG in his hand vanishes. His lieutenant breaks away to coordinate the cleanup, leaving them alone.

“You were willing to risk your own base, just for that?” If Sjin sounds incredulous, he really is; no person in their right mind would ever think about doing what he’s just done, not without being extraordinarily confident that it would work out exactly how they'd planned.

Daltos gives an exaggerated roll of his eyes. “The frigate can take plenty of punishment. That’d have hardly dented it.” There is genuine affection in his voice for the warship and a sense of pride that appeals to Sjin.

“Then what were you so worried about?”

“That the new hull plating wouldn’t work as advertised and I lost the receipt,” Daltos tells him in a serious tone.

“I actually can’t tell if you’re joking.”

“Still want that frigate tour?”

“No thanks.” Sjin shakes his head. If this is what a normal day is like, then no, he'd rather not visit. “I think we’d better host the meetings at my place from now on.”

“Shame, but good idea.” Daltos doesn't even sound that disappointed at Sjin’s decision. 

“Maybe when there’s no mutinies?” Sjin eyes him with wariness.

“I'll get back to you on that.” Daltos lifts a hand to yank out the bit of metal sticking out of his still bleeding shoulder, much to Sjin’s consternation. Before he can, a shadow drifts closer. 

For the fifth time today, Sjin swallows back the urge to puke. The two metre being he'd heard screaming earlier shuffles close to Daltos. They are cradling an item (that is definitely not a baby) caked all over with blood. They present him with it by dropping it at his feet, shyly nudging it towards him with an equally messy hand.

Much to Sjin’s astonishment, Daltos leans down to pick up the head with a squelch, hefting it up so he can examine it. Blood drips down his hands, leaving crimson trails behind.

“Aw, you shouldn't have,” He says, sounding pleased with the offering. 

“Cant,” The being says, seeming abashed as Sjin claps a hand over his mouth, bile in his gut fighting to escape. They eagerly gesture to the head, fingers flexing as they then mime pulling their mask down.

“You want the face? Sure.” Daltos pulls out a bladed pistol, taking hold of the head in his other hand so that the face is looking at him.

Sjin can’t tear his eyes away (no matter how much he wants to) as the edge slides underneath skin. Daltos deftly flicks the blade in and up. How is there so much _blood_ pouring from one decapitated head? The bladed pistol is put away. The bandit watching shifts on the spot in excitement, just as entranced.

Two of Daltos’ gloved fingers slide under the nick; Sjin’s throat clenches from the _horrible_ sound that results as Daltos grimaces and starts to pull and oh god, why is he still watching, the face grotesquely warping as it’s slowly being peeled off to expose a network of shiny pink muscle, the pearly white of an eyeball-no, no, no, this isn’t happening.

He’ll never be able to react to any similar sound the same way ever again, this is _barbaric_ - _Daltos looks right at home doing this_. He is taking enormous care to leave the face intact. With every bit that’s pulled free, the more excited the bandit beside him becomes.

Something about the sight of Daltos makes Sjin black out. Miraculously, he is still standing when he comes to. By then, Daltos tosses the bit of flesh that’s the head’s face to Cant. Cant snatches it out of the air and darts off to join their waiting comrades.

Daltos turns to him and grins like there is nothing deeply fucked up about what he just did. Sjin does not remember Daltos escorting him back to the Fast Travel Station.

When Sjin gets home, he scrubs like a madman in the shower, almost rubbing his skin raw in spite of the fact that no blood ever touched his bare skin. The place where Daltos grabbed his arm itches; Sjin barely manages to stop himself from scratching his skin right off.

Instead, he checks his body over and over in the mirror, so very sure that he missed a fleck somewhere, terrified that when he wakes up the next day, his arm will be missing its skin. No amount of warm water or soap will erase the image burned into his brain but he can sure as hell try to forget it (and it’s not the first time he’s lying to himself like this).

\--

There is a figure with a grey pallor to his skin who arrives to every lecture ten minutes (never a minute earlier or later) beforehand. They spend every lecture clicking their pen, never letting the tip touch their notepad and setting those within earshot to grinding their teeth. By the end of the first week, the other students know to give them a wide berth.

It might have been Sjin’s imagination but there might have been a tiny, satisfied quirk to the figure’s mouth at having managed to obtain all that extra leg and elbow room. The lecture halls are usually packed so the professors never notice the absent seats around them.

Sjin’s done all the prerequisite reading and hunted down each of his professors as to know what’s coming up in class, so he doesn’t have to concentrate too much on jotting down comprehensive notes. The notes serve to give his hands something to do so he doesn’t end up leaving out of boredom.

He spends the rest of the time watching the mysterious figure whenever his gaze drifts over them; it’s hard not to do so, considering he always sits several rows behind them, as to not strain his eyes for the rare times he has to look up and transcribe whatever is on the screen.

An uneventful month flies by. Sjin finds that he looks forward to seeing the figure at every lecture. They’re both taking the same courses, their timetables overlapping. He never sees them outside of class. 

Did they live on campus? Did they commute in from elsewhere? Are they an off-worlder? Burning questions start to swirl around his mind, with every lecture spent watching them.

More than once when passing them up the stairs to his seat, Sjin feels the urge to simply ask and get it over with. He keeps his gaze averted, squashing the urge; he doesn’t want to come off as prying or even worse, weird. The figure never speaks up during lectures either.

While Sjin’s relationship with the other students is tolerable, he can feel annoyed glances boring into the back of his head whenever the professor asks a question. When there’s nothing but silence, Sjin raises his hand high up into the air and confidently gives the answer.

Well, none of the other students ever participate and he’s doing everyone a favor by sparing all of them another minute or so of awkward silence. It’s not like he _wants_ to be a show-off. 

Once, the figure had tilted their head down, their pen descending to jot down notes during one of those moments; Sjin almost stumbles over his words but manages to deliver a perfect summary of that day’s lecture. The professor praises him. 

Everybody but the figure and the professor rolls their eyes at Sjin once again, taking one for the team. Once everyone starts to pack up, Sjin spends a few, flustered moments in his seat taking deep breaths (had he actually gotten them to take notes at last?), then starts to gather up his books and pens. People grumble as they're forced to step around him for taking his time.

The figure finally lifts their pen up off their paper, grabbing their notepad up to stand. They turn to shimmy out of the row, only to turn around and look up when Sjin lifts his head. Their gazes meet. They lift up a hand to give a lazy wave, shooting him a grin before turning around and descending down the steps. Sjin blinks. 

He spends the rest of the day in a joyful mood that not even the disgruntled mutters of ‘kissass’, know-it-all’, or ‘hipster’ as he passes can drag down his spirits. 

From that point on, he makes a concentrated effort to sit behind the figure where he’d once been content to let them be in plain sight, off to the side. Not knowing that they're present is enough; he finds his gaze drifting over to them whenever his attention wavers. 

Their hair’s gotten longer in the past few months. They also wear a sock and sandal combination into every class. If they're bothered by the snickers rippling out whenever they walk in, they hide it under a mask of perfect indifference. Sjin suspects they don't give a single shit about what other people think of them. 

Sjin doesn't even know their name yet. He doesn't want to ask his classmates (if they can even be called that, more like vampires mooching off of his hard work).

As for why he feels compelled to watch them like this, he can't really explain _why_. They just fascinate him. He's never seen or met anybody quite like them before and besides, if they're not there, the lectures could drag on.

The one time that the figure doesn't show up, Sjin finds himself nodding off. He forces himself to take notes, distracted by the absence of his favourite, lone ranger of a figure.

His thoughts keep being ensnared by the worst possibilities; had something happened to them? Delayed them from coming to class? An accident? Maybe they got sick but what if they miss a whole week of class? 

Sjin can't even imagine doing that, let alone willingly.

The professor is going over what will be on the mid-term exam (this lecture is not being recorded, as they'd dryly noted at the start). 

It's the last lecture of his day. The figure doesn't even show up until the lecture ends and the professor has taken off; Sjin is one of the last people packing his things into his bag when he spots them coming into the room, out of breath.

They frown at the empty lecture hall, saying two words that sums up their situation.

“Aw, _shit_.”

It's the first time Sjin’s ever heard them speak; their voice is deeper than he’d expected, gravelly but easy enough on his ears. He’s finds that he’s already walking over to them, pushing a smile onto his face that he hopes isn't the least bit wooden or makes him look constipated.

“You missed the lecture?” Much to his own relief, he doesn't blurt it out, coming off as mildly concerned (play it cool Sjin, don't stammer, don't fidget, don't blush, just act _natural_ ).

“Hey there,” The figure greets. “Yeah, I couldn't find parking in time since everyone just decided to cockblock me by taking all the good spots,” They drawl in that unhurried, soothing (to Sjin’s ears, at least) way of theirs.

“Oh, that's a real shame,” Sjin says, not feeling very sympathetic (he takes the early bus in and out of campus to avoid that happening), mustering up a tone that sounds otherwise, however. 

The figure smiles. Sjin’s heart drops out of his gut faster than he can think ‘you had me at _hello_ ’. He’s not too busy scrambling after his mislaid heart and stuffing it back where it belongs to make the offer he’d been debating on for the past minute or so

“I could lend you my notes,” Sjin offers.

“You’d really do that?” The figure blinks, peering at him with incredulity, unable to process his generosity.

“I know all of the material so I don't really need my notes as much,” Sjin says, remembering to look and sound as modest as he possibly can. He fishes out his notebook from his satchel, holding it out for the figure to take.

They take it, handling it like it’s made of the finest glass. “Thank you, that's very kind of you. When do you want this back?”

“Oh, anytime after the midterm exam,” Sjin says, inwardly pleased with his deed. 

The figure is leafing through his book already, their stubby fingers taking care not to wrinkle any of the pages or smudge the ink. “It says ‘Sjin’ on the front. Unless you're yanking my chain, I'll assume that's your name.”

“It is,” Sjin puts forth. 

“How embarrassing, I know my guardian angel’s name and you don't even know mine.” The figure closes his book to gesture to themself. “Sips is the name, opening a million dollar company is my game.”

“Nice to meet you -” Sjin would have shaken his hand if someone behind him hadn't cleared their throat.

He turns. It's the janitor, who’d like him and Sips to vacate the room. Smarting, Sjin leads Sips out, continuing to talk to him about anything that pops into his head. Sips is proving to be an easily entertained conversationalist, if prone to creating tangents and following through on them. 

The midterm comes and goes; Sjin and Sips are in the same block but he's seated in front of him, not the other way around. He answers the questions without racking his brain too much, his pen moving steadily over the paper. He’s done half an hour early, spending the rest of his time proofreading and the rest of the time bored, waiting. 

He only wonders how Sips is doing once, wanting to turn around to see how he’s going but that’d probably get him accused of cheating. 

When the timer goes off, the room is filled with a collective sigh of relief (a few of utter despair mingling in for good measure from the less fortunate). Sjin picks up his bag and pens, heading off home. That's his last midterm over; he’s looking forward to sleeping the rest of his day away. 

He forgets about Sips when thinking about what to eat until his voice threads into his mind. Or maybe Sips is actually calling out for him.

“Sjin!” Sips catches up to him, having slipped free of the crowd leaving the exam center. He slows to a stop, doubling over from the stitch in his side. 

“Sips!” Sjin is unable to hide how his heart skips a beat at the sight of him (even when he's out of breath and is still wearing his shirt, tie, socks and sandals combo). “How'd you do on the midterm?”

“I know I'm not failing, thanks to you.” Sips flashes a thumbs up, proceeding to dig around in his digistruct module for something. “I know it's in here somewhere…gotcha, you little shit.” He presents Sjin with his notebook in mint condition. Sjin takes it with mild surprise; he'd expected it to be returned later (if at all). 

“Aw, you didn't have to return it so soon,” Sjin says, tucking it away. Sips raises an eyebrow at the lack of digistruct modules on his person. Sjin is too busy replaying the thanks and thumbs up Sips had given him in his mind to notice. 

“I saw you walking off and little voice in my inventory started whispering ‘return me, return me,’” Sips explains, whispering the last few words in an over dramatic tone. 

“Thank you anyway.” Sjin makes sure he means it.

“I need a coffee, my brain needs its morning caffeine fix. Want to come along? You don't have to, I'm just being polite and will not mind in the least if you do in fact, decide to grace me with your company,” Sips rambles in his easygoing manner. 

There goes all of Sjin’s morning plans out the window, his mind screeching to a halt; Sips is inviting him to get a _coffee_.

“I’d love to,” Sjin pleasantly agrees, letting Sips lead the way. 

The coffee shop on campus Sips picks is tucked out of the hustle and bustle of the main paths. The cashier shoots them a smile when they enter. The aroma of food drifting over from the kitchen is to _die_ for, it’s that delicious. Sjin’s mouth is already watering just from breathing in the air. 

Sips decides to have a staring contest with the specials of the day menu when it's their turn to order. Thankfully, they're the only two in line. While he’s doing that, Sjin orders an Eggs Benedict (can't ever go wrong with that) and a mocha, with soy milk. The cashier doesn't even blink at his order, simply nodding. 

Sips offers to pay for Sjin’s food and drink. Sjin lets him, only after Sips agrees to a system of tabs. They take their table number and pick a booth where the view overlooks the lake.

“So, what do you like?” Sjin picks up the thread of their conversation. He’d been voicing question after question that Sips answers, answering the ones he poses to him in turn. 

“Well, I've always liked dirt,” Sips begins without hesitation, adopting a self-important tone. “I really like the feel of it in between my toes, how it really gets into every single nook, cranny and fold of skin, makes it all the more satisfying when it's time to wash your feet…”

Sjin stifles a giggle upon remembering Sips’ current footwear, and listens, enraptured by him. 

By the time Sips checks the time (the waiter having cleared their plates, forks and cups long ago), almost three hours have passed in the blink of an eye. “Damn, we’ve been here three hours.”

“Really?” Sjin glances up at the clock on the wall, blinking. Sips hadn't been joking. Three hours had indeed, gone by without notice. He sits up straight, wondering if he can somehow permanently fix this moment into his memory. 

Sips grins. “You've been a great conversationalist and a listener,” He notes without any sarcasm whatsoever.

“Well, you certainly kept the conversation going,” Sjin says, smothering a chuckle. He hadn't said a single word in the three hours Sips had been babbling away aimlessly. If it'd been any other person, Sjin would have just taken his coffee and left after feeding a bullshit excuse to them.

Sips’ grin grows the slightest bit sheepish. “By the way, I wasn’t actually serious about the dirt.” A beat. “I just wanted to see how you’d react to me talking about dirt for three hours straight.”

Sjin is quiet, if only because he’s still feeling his heart melting from that compliment. “You made dirt sound interesting, though,” He admits.

“You think so?” Sips leans back in his chair after a second of looking taken aback. Had he been expecting Sjin to walk out on him? Sjin pities those who had; they don't know what they're missing, then. Most importantly, it’s left Sips free for him.

“It’s actually because I’m thinking of starting up a mining company once I get out of this place. That's where all the big ones are, these days.” Well, that'd partly explain his obsession with dirt. “You seem like you’ve got your head on pretty straight compared to the rest of these chumps. Want to be my co-CEO?”

 _Obviously_ , Sjin had said ‘yes’.

\--

It’s not Bachem who fucks up this time. It’s Bucker. Ever since they’d won a peninsula thanks to Sjin sending those much needed supplies, they'd bounced back from their losses earlier than Daltos had expected.

What he sees of the west coast in person only ever extends past Opportunity. In contrast, he knows the east coast like the back of his hand. He does however, have a completed map Sjin gladly sent to him on request.

Hawker and Hurricane are busy with flying supplies to the outer territories, so that left only Donier to scout. That pilot has a little too much enthusiasm for hurling incendiaries from his Buzzard into enemies’ faces and laughing about it later. A chuffed Donier had still agreed to scout, though. 

While he’s still salty about losing his gang to Daltos in a bar brawl and took every opportunity to remind him of the fact, he’s the only pilot available. 

Three days later after flying solo, Donier been able to confirm that the map matched up with the lie of the land.

There should have been no excuse, really, when it happens, ‘it’ being a scouting party of Bucker’s unit stumbling across Lynchwood and getting thrown into jail. 

Daltos knows that sheriffs still exist, keeping the law alive and well. They're a rarity on the east coast, simply because bandit populations and pockets of resistance eventually stamped out the law whenever it sprung up, being treated like a persistent weed.

Most sheriffs also couldn't resist the eventual abuse of authority and power their standing afforded them. The towns in his territories are happy to let his lieutenants take the law into their own hands, forging their own brand of it.

Yes, bandits have a code of honour. Well, his gang does, at any rate. Every lieutenant of his (upon being promoted) knows the steep price of breaking that code. Daltos makes it crystal clear that he only gives them one chance to prove themselves and if they threw that chance away for whatever bullshit reason, they’re as good as dead.

Failure is something else. He doesn't punish for failure, having experienced his own fair share of them. Disobeying orders falls into a different category.

Lynchwood won't hand over his bandits. By the time Daltos arrives at the main camp, striding into Bucker’s tent, Bucker is sitting on a crate with his head bowed, looking pale and stricken with guilt. The terms the sheriff's sent over are: the rest of them stay away from Lynchwood or they’ll hang his bandits. He’s to come alone at high noon. 

Five minutes before high noon, Daltos walks up to the front gate. He’s on his own, as per the terms. He’s not worried about dying; if it happens, it happens. If they open fire on him, the rest of his forces are waiting, ready to retaliate. 

Normally, he doesn’t like playing by someone else’s rules but there are times when he has to make exceptions.

“Stop!” An authoritative voice calls down to him. Crushing the temptation to do otherwise, Daltos stops, looking up at the gate. 

He spots a figure in a cowboy hat and duster coat, with several others posted at regular intervals along the wall. There’s his bandits, their hands tied behind their backs. Daltos is pleased to see that none of them have come to any major harm. Some of them shout in joy when they see him, only to be jabbed in the back by their guard. They fall into a resentful silence.

He does not want to be hopeful, maintaining a pessimistic outlook on the situation even if the sight of his bandits raises his spirits.

“Let’s negotiate!” He shouts up at the lead figure. When silence answers him, he tries again. “Sheriff Turps, I know you can hear me!”

“We don't negotiate with _bandits_ ,” is Turps’ only answer, delivered in a cold tone.

Before Daltos can protest, he hears some of his bandits shout in alarm, yelling from the sheriff’s men, shots and scuffles breaking out atop the gate.

The ten bandits are flung over the side of the gate, a noose tied around each their necks. 

The nooses are tightening, pulled down by gravity and their own body weight. Some kick and struggle, attempting to free themselves, others sport bullet holes, death by hanging or blood loss pitted against each other. Two bandits died (he considers them more fortunate than the others) before being hung, their chests decimated by a point-blank shotgun blast.

Daltos watches his own men die in front of him, not batting an eyelid when they twitch one last time before stilling.

“Let that be a warning to you-” Turps shouts, sounding smug about wiping more bandit scum off the face of Pandora.

Not in the mood to hear his crowing, Daltos messages Fairey Gannet, his gang’s resident sniper. Shots ring out, causing Turps and his guards to withdraw out of fear. Cowards, the lot of them. He regards them with nothing but contempt. The bodies fall to the ground, thanks to Fairey’s pinpoint shooting.

For a single second, he is so tempted to order the rest of his forces to obliterate Lynchwood for the sake of avenging his dead. That won’t accomplish anything except for pointless destruction, wasting resources better invested elsewhere. It’s hard banishing it from his mind when his anger clings to it with a stubborn vindictiveness.

Daltos reminds himself that there are likely innocents living in the town (blissfully unaware of their sheriff’s dickish shortcomings) who don’t need to get dragged into the mess.

A technical driven by one of Stirling’s bandits rolls up next to him. They and two others climb out. With their help, Daltos silently moves each of the bodies into the technical’s trailer. They’re too far away to make it back to the frigate before the bodies start to decompose. Daltos climbs into the turret, not looking back at Lynchwood as the technical speeds away.

Bucker’s already cleared out an area and dug the graves. The ten bodies are buried deep enough so that any enterprising skags can't dig them up. 

There's not much to say; with every battle comes death. These bandits didn't even die in the manner his gang is most accustomed to: fighting tooth and nail out of the hell they've brought onto themselves.

Still, Daltos tells them as much. Every bandit behind him bows their head in respect. Cant lets out a low, mournful sound that carries across the plain. He takes Cant aside while the rest of his forces are getting ready to set out (nobody wanting to stick around in the area).

“Take care of Bucker,” He tells Cant. Cant nods, understanding.

“What do you want to do?” Gotha leans down to ask him to ask in their version of a whisper. It still carries quite a few metres away.

“We continue,” is all that Daltos says.

Five days later, Bucker reports in that they’ve found place that will serve as the perfect stronghold, except there’s one small problem: the dam is already occupied by another gang in the midst of a territorial dispute currently playing out. Bucker would like to know how they should proceed.

Daltos orders them to watch and wait, let the other gangs tire themselves out with the fighting and then they’ll move in. 

He listens for any trace of exhaustion (corralling several units into moving daily is not a task for the faint-hearted or pushovers but Bucker has a proven knack for it) in his lieutenant’s voice, for the tell-tale sign that he’s about to crack. He finds none, forcing himself to be satisfied with the lack of Bucker falling apart after what’d gone down at Lynchwood.

Before they cut the call, Bucker forwards him information about a bunch of Rats living in the Fridge. Perhaps they’d be willing to be recruited? Gotha, Cant and Donier refuse to talk to those ‘squishy, cowardly cannibals’ who’ve been breaking into their food stores at every chance.

He makes a note of it and reschedules his meeting with Sjin. Sjin doesn’t mind moving their meeting to another day.

\--

-// NOW PLAYING ECHO LOG //-

Ravs: Daltos. 

Daltos: Ravs. I had no idea you were in the area. What do you want?

Ravs: Alright, this ain’t easy for me to say, but I’ve been putting up with a month of fighting over at the dam and the noise is getting to me and my citizens. I’m going to have to ask you to ask your bandits to stop fighting Parvis’ lot.

Daltos: If Parvis would just kindly hand over the dam, we wouldn't be having this problem.

Ravs: He doesn’t want to and I'm not going to force or ask him to.

Daltos: Invest in some earplugs or something then, because I’m not telling my bandits to back off after we’ve just spent an entire week trying to take that dam.

Ravs: How about you leave the dam alone and go after Sawtooth Cauldron instead? Better placement, easier to defend, the Sawteeth are pushovers, and it comes with landing pads pre-installed.

Daltos: I’ll consider it after I take the dam.

Ravs: How about you consider the fact that if you or Parvis don’t stop by tomorrow, I’ll be forced to step in and take the both of you and your gangs out.

Daltos: ...Fine, but I'm name dropping you to avoid catching flak from them.

Ravs: I’m fine with that, just stop making so much noise.

Daltos: You’re never happy unless you're the cause.

Ravs: Touché. Do drop Parvis a line and sort this shit out, will you?

Daltos: It’s not like you're giving me any other choice.

\- // SKIPPING AHEAD TO SECOND HALF OF LOG // -

Parvis: This is Bandit Lord Parvis of the Bloody Bandits, famous Pandoran musician and-

Daltos: Am I actually speaking to Parvis or not?

Parvis: Yes, you are! Who’re you? You're not Ravs, so this can't be good news.

Daltos: This is Daltos of the Blitzkrieg Blighters-

Parvis: Give me a moment. 

Daltos: ...Okay?

Parvis: There, I'm done screaming about the fact that you're actually talking to me. Wait, I didn't mean to say that out loud, forget you heard all of that!

Daltos: I'm more than happy to. Ravs wants us to stop fighting and I think the fastest way to do that would be to surrender.

Parvis: Oh, are you surrendering? That’s bloody fantastic! Sparkles-

Daltos: Sorry to burst your bubble, but you got it wrong, it's the other way around.

Parvis: So I'm the one surrendering, not you.

Daltos: Yes.

Parvis: Rejected, there's no way I'm giving up the dam. Sorry.

Daltos: I figured it’d come to that. Was nice knowing you-

Parvis: Don't hang up! 

Daltos: Why not?

Parvis: We can talk this out. 

Daltos: ...What do you propose?

Parvis: Truce.

Daltos: You do realise most bandits, yours and mine included, can barely spell it out let alone know the concept exists, right?

Parvis: Which is why I propose a meeting at Ravs’ place so we can agree on it first and then explain it to them!

Daltos: This is either the worst or best idea I’ve ever heard.

Parvis: So, want to give it a whirl? Ravs can just punch the ones who don't want a truce.

Daltos: Fine. Message me the time and date. 

Parvis: Okay! ...SPARKLES, HE WANTS TO MEET. WHAT DO I DO.

Daltos: You might want to check your ECHO is actually turned off.

Parvis: Oops.

\- // END ECHO LOG // -

\--

Well, the outcome of that conversation is that Parvis wants to meet him. Tomorrow. Fuck, Daltos should not have let him pick the meeting time and day. At least the time Parvis picked is reasonable. What is not reasonable is that he is going to have to really rush when it comes to visiting the newly established west coast territories.

His current lieutenants are stretched thin as it is; he's actually having to fight alongside some to make up for how cut off they are from the rest of his forces. Arado’s looking into promoting several more but as he noted ages ago, it's hard to find good lieutenants who won't run amok when left to their own devices.

The meeting place Parvis picked is the Crooked Caber, Ravs’ bar set in the middle of a town centred around a hole in the ground. Well, the location’s not any of his concern as it’s neutral grounds; what's more pressing is the choice of lieutenants to take along with him.

Five minutes into the morning meeting, Hawker and Donier had started a shouting match over who should go. Everybody else took sides or made their own. 

Stirling (using the little stool provided to boost them enough to see the map) has climbed onto the table. This earns a cutting retort from Donier at their attempt to push their case.

“Oh look, Stirling wants to feel important by standing on the table,” He comments, grinning a gap-toothed grin. 

Stirling launches themself at him in response, latching onto him to beat his face in with their brass knuckled fists. 

“Stop attacking the other lieutenants!” Bucker, Hurricane and Arado (the only sensible ones) are trying to restore order. However, Daltos knows that they're not going to get anywhere without his help.

For once, he wishes he could have _one_ meeting without it dissolving into chaos at any given point. Just _one_ , that's all he asks. 

He ends up walking out instead. They're all too busy nursing their bruised egos and letting tempers run wild to even notice. Except for one, who lifts their masked head at the last second to spot the blue of his jacket before the doors slide shut.

As it is when he’s overcome by the urge to murder an innocent creature by snapping its neck, Daltos winds up where the pilotless Buzzards sleep to have a smoke. He’s not afraid of heights or falling so he risks sitting on the very edge of the platform, letting his legs dangle out over the side. 

Just in case anybody tries anything, he lets half his attention focus on the sound of possible footsteps behind him.

The airlock whooshes open. He turns his head to spot who it is joining him outside. It’s Cant, who’s empty-handed for once. They amble over to him in a few long-legged strides. Crouching lets them join him. 

“Go away, Cant,” Daltos sighs.

“Cant,” Cant automatically says, stopping just at the edge of the platform. They peer over the edge before shuffling back in fear.

“Please?” Daltos shoots Cant an obliging look that they pretend not to see. He knows they can see it because no enemy has ever been able to sneak up on them from behind or either side.

“Cant,” They say, sounding concerned and hovering closer to him.

Accepting that they're not going to leave without a fight, Daltos returns to smothering the still burning temptation to throw his lieutenants off the platform one by one. Except for Bucker, Hurricane, Klemm, Fieseler, Arado, Arsenal and Siebel. Fine, maybe Cant can go on the list too. They've proven their worth multiple times, on and off the battlefield.

Cant reaches for the cigarette in his hand when they think he's not paying close attention. Without turning, he smacks their hand away, blowing out a cloud of smoke that’s carried away by a passing breeze.

They yank their hand back with a disgruntled sound. “Cant,” They mutter after, deadeyeing his cigarette.

“Still not quitting,” Daltos reminds them. “Have they stopped arguing yet?” Cant responds with a rapid shake of their head, also lifting up their good hand to sign ‘no’ in his peripheral vision. “I bet you that those fuckers haven't even noticed me leaving.” He doesn't mean to sound miffed that only Cant’s come after him. 

Besides, he is so fucking tired of running damage control. Let them see what it feels like to do it for a change. It's not as simple as they think. He’s practically perfected it into an art form by now.

A soft ‘thump’ sounds right next to him. Out of the corner of his eye, Cant has stopped crouching on the platform to sit cross-legged instead, long legs folded neatly underneath them. Or would be, if one of their legs cooperated. 

They lean over to nudge him in consolation. “Cant,” They say, a sympathetic note in their tone.

“Thanks. At least one person appreciates me around here.” 

“Cant?” They slyly inquire, tapping themself on the chest, then gesturing to him. When he doesn't get it, they repeat it again, much more slowly.

“No, you can't come along,” He impatiently says. “At this point, I'm not picking _anyone_.” Cant gives him the equivalent of a pleading look. “If that’s how they behave at regular meetings, I ain't taking them along to a truce meeting.”

“Cant,” Cant repeats, much more stubbornly.

Daltos rolls his eyes. “How can I trust you to behave even if I do bring you along?” In response, Cant mimes ‘cross my heart and hope to die’, looking at him intensely after.

He doesn't know what to make of it, feeling a laugh bubble up in his chest that escapes. 

“Cant,” They say, encouragingly. It feels an awful lot like Cant is saying ‘you can trust me’.

“You're _terrible_.” He lets a pause pass so he can breathe out another noxious cloud of smoke. “Don't make me regret bringing you along.”

Cant almost knocks him off the platform in joy. At that moment, Arado steps out of the airlock.

“Daltos?” They say, uncertain at whether or not they're interrupting something important. Daltos turns to them. 

“What?”

“We’re ready to have the meeting again. Without fights,” Arado informs him.

“You sure?” Daltos can't help being skeptical. His lieutenants are never well behaved for long without a death threat hanging over their heads. 

“Arsenal intervened. Gave them a mighty big lecture about not letting your hair get any greyer than it is by not being ginormous assholes and stressing you out more,” Arado explains with a smirk.

“ _Fuck you_ and fuck Arsenal.” A brilliant idea comes to him. “You know what? You can come to the truce meeting.”

“Wait, what did you say?” Arado blinks, realising what he's saying and stepping back. “ _No_.” That idea has wiped the smirk from their face, replacing it with horror.

“That's an order.”

“If this is for getting back at me about Hawker and Hurricane switching places, that wasn't me, I fell for it too.”

“I'm helping you get out more,” Daltos says with as much sincerity as he can muster and a sadistic grin. “I think I'll take Gotha too, they've been good. The rest will just have to fucking live with it.”

\--

Parvis shows up to the Crooked Caber three hours early. Ravs has nothing against early birds but three hours is a bit much. He doesn't tell him this though, letting Parvis sweep out the room that he’s going to borrow for the meeting.

“Do you think he’ll really show up?” Parvis asks him, leaning on the borrowed broom, fretting about how well the meeting will go down.

Ravs smiles. Parvis can’t help but note that it’s a fond one. “Stop worrying, you have my word that he'll show up, even if he’s fashionably late.” Seeing Parvis is still nervous, Ravs adds half-jokingly, “Daltos doesn't bite. Not unless you ask him to, I suppose.” 

The smile Ravs has on his face speaks volumes about implications that Parvis finds he wants to know about because he's a dirty pervert. Since he wants to be on good terms with Ravs, he actually keeps his mouth shut this once.

“ _Oh_. Okay, then.” Parvis clears his throat. 

The ECHO call hadn't included a video feed so he has no idea what the other Bandit Lord looks like. He’d let his imagination run wild yesterday and today. 

He puts the broom aside to go and wait out the rest of the three hours at the dam, at Ravs’ insistence. It’s _torture_ , that’s what. Sparkles too, ends up shooing him from his room once he's made a nuisance of himself obssessing over whether or not Sparkles looks intimidating enough. 

Kogie and Leo persuade him to help tune their guitars. Even so, Parvis spends more time than he should on the task that Kogie eventually snatches the guitar from him in exasperation to tune it himself.

Parvis retreats to his room to pick out his best jacket and possibly fix up his bandanna (it's looking a little too shabby for his liking). At least it passes the time; Sparkles rolls up to his door to collect him with Kogie and Leo plus a few of their most seasoned, least injured bandits. The rest are still licking their wounds or healing up in their rooms.

Their motley crew drives on over to Sanctuary Hole. Parvis is a bundle of excited nerves, looking forward to and dreading the meeting, hoping that he doesn't make even more of an idiot out of himself. 

Ravs serves him a drink, something pungent and strong, ‘to inspire confidence’. Parvis is only just done sipping the last few drops when one of his bandits barges into the room.

“They're here!” They burst out.

Parvis puts down his drink and moves to take up the lead position, resisting the urge to fidget. The alcohol is coursing through his system, rendering him much more placid (and not). Sparkles eyes him when he starts flattening his wild hair and tugging his bandanna into place.

“You look fine,” He observes, the corner of his mouth twitching. 

“I know I am,” Parvis responds but his words come out shaky. So much for the drink of confidence. 

The front door of the Crooked Caber swings opens and in walk four people, three of them clad in a navy blue that has Parvis’ trigger finger twitching on reflex. Two of them have to duck under the doorway to avoid knocking their heads into the wood but fit into the room without a problem.

Parvis recognises the bandits who like to run in and clobber people to death; he's never seen one that's as gigantic as the one taking up the rear, though. The tattoo taking up the expanse of their broad back screams their allegiance out to the world. 

The other one is a Goliath but like their companion, no Goliath should be that tall and menacing. They tread over to the side of the room to wait alongside the Psycho. 

Which of the remaining two bandits is the Bandit Lord here to see him?

Parvis automatically steps up to the taller one wearing a battered set of grey armor with licks of blue staining it. The helmet hides their face but does little to conceal the air of faint annoyance they’re giving off. 

“Daltos, right?” The moment that question leaves his mouth, the Goliath, Marauder and the Psycho all let out mean snickers that die once the unaddressed bandit shoots them a glare. 

Wait, unless-oh, he's _fucked_ up big time already. Parvis is mortified, turning to the remaining bandit once the Marauder joins their two comrade. Behind Parvis, Sparkles facepalms as Ravs pretends he's not watching by wiping away at the counter with a rag.

The bandit left is looking at Parvis with a mixture of evident annoyance and weariness (like they've been through this exact same situation before). They're almost the same height so Parvis doesn't need to crane his head up.

Still, Parvis can't help but stare, all of his made-up images of their appearance going ‘poof’. What’s standing in front of him is _even better_. “I'm so sorry-” He starts, intending to fully apologise for his grievous error. 

Daltos cuts him off with a dismissive wave of his hand. “It's fine, I get that a lot.”

The stuns Parvis but not for long; any easily offended Bandit Lord would have hit him by now and sparked another war. “Should we head off now? I've prepared a meeting room.” He wrings his hands, hoping that Daltos agrees.

The look that passes over Daltos’ face is approving. Parvis nods to Sparkles, Kogie and Leo, indicating that they should stay where they are. Daltos does the same thing.

“I’m going to need you two to hand over your guns first so if things get heated, you don't shoot up the room or each other,” Ravs calls out to them.

“Ravs,” Daltos evenly says, once he's walked over to the bar. He unclips the two modules on his belt to toss them to Ravs with a practiced air. 

Catching them in one gloved hand, Ravs winks at him, putting away the modules away under the counter. “Daltos, it's good to see you again. Hope there's no hard feelings between us,” He says, apologetically. “I wasn't in the best of moods when we last chatted.” 

“None at all,” Daltos evenly says, shrugging.

“We should catch up sometime, for old time’s sake. My treat.” Daltos gives Ravs a searching look that lasts for a few seconds. His face is blank with no trace of emotion contained in it. Ravs gives him an inviting smile, leaning on the counter. “I know how lonely it can get out on that frigate of yours…”

“Maybe later.” Daltos looks thoughtful (for a single moment) before turning away to stride into the back room without a backwards glance. Ravs’ head turns to follow him with an air of wistfulness.

Parvis fumbles with his own modules, passing them over as well. Good grief, what was _that_ all about? He hadn't known Ravs to actually go that far back with him. Parvis races after Daltos, stuffing his curiosity back into its box before it makes him ask and ruin everything.

Once he closes the solid metal door (being extra careful to not slam it), he slides into the chair opposite Daltos, careful not to look too eager. He opts for his best, businesslike expression. He doesn't know it still makes him look even more eager to begin.

The room (like everything else on Pandora, looks like it’s seen better days) just consists of one table shoved into the centre and two chairs stolen from elsewhere in the bar. 

Daltos doesn't seem to mind, though. His arms are crossed over his chest, expression still blank.

“You don't want to surrender,” He states in a mild tone. “No other bandit’s ever said that to me and exactly lived, after.”

Much to his surprise, Parvis ducks his head with a not quite hidden, delighted smile. Did he just hear Parvis mutter ‘oh no, he's hot when he's making veiled threats?’. 

Nah, must be his imagination, helped by a coming off a mild painkiller and suffering from a general lack of sleep.

“Well, I don't want to die since Ravs hits pretty hard,” Parvis brightly says, lifting his head to beam at him. “And it'd be a big shame if you die too if we can't agree on a truce.” He says the word ‘truce’ with utter care (had he been practicing in front of a mirror?). “I’m using the word right, right?”

“The definition of truce is when both sides agree to disagree,” Daltos recites. Confusion flits over Parvis’ face. “Yes, that's the definition of a truce.” He sighs. “We stop fighting.” For now, he thinks. 

“Oh, okay! Yeah, I like the sound of a truce.” 

Already, Daltos has the impression that Parvis is not the sharpest knife in the drawer. “Are we done?” He moves to leave when Parvis coughs. 

“I want some conditions for it, first,” He says in a sharp voice that has Daltos pausing. He sits back down, staring at Parvis. Parvis is gnawing at his lower lip, his eyes bright with cunning. 

“You wanted a truce and now you want a truce, with _conditions_ ,” Daltos says, his tone flat.

“It'd be bad if you went off and came back to attack when Ravs isn't around to stop you.” Parvis’ observation rings true. 

Daltos had been planning to do just that; Ravs couldn't always be around and even if he's just met Parvis, he has no qualms about eliminating him to prevent another incident like this. Sure, he'll respect Ravs’ wishes but Ravs hadn’t said anything about protecting Parvis.

Well, two can play at that game.

“I'm not inclined to just accept any old truce with conditions unless I get to propose conditions as well,” Daltos responds. Judging by the stunned look on Parvis’ face, Parvis hadn't expected his gamble of asking for a condition laden truce to pay off. 

“That's not fair, you were the one attacking!” Parvis glares at him, whatever brightness he’d been wearing replaced by indignation.

“Hey, you didn't specify if it had to be your conditions or mine being laid out, you just said ‘conditions’,” Daltos points out, smirking, not regretting having delivered a hard lesson to Parvis.

Parvis looks like he's dearly regretting opening his mouth, a sour look on his face, his pale cheeks now flushed with anger. “ _Fine_ , I want you to never come within a thousand metres of my dam.”

“You little _shit_.” Parvis smirks in turn, only to have it be wiped off his face when Daltos smugly notes, “I can just send my bandits over in my place, you know.”

“Your bandits aren't allowed to come anywhere near the dam either!” Parvis retorts. “Hey, hold up, you could have just kept that to yourself! Are you trying to trick me again?”

“Maybe,” Daltos says, adding derisively, “Did you really think I'd be such a pushover?”

Parvis almost knocks the table over when he gets to his feet, his hands balling up into fists. He’s chewing his lip, clearly torn between wanting to punch him (since he can’t exactly shoot him, what with the lack of guns on his person) or being impressed.

“Yeah, I did, ever since you agreed to the meeting so easily,” Parvis finally says, flashing him a cheeky grin.

“You just keep digging your own _grave_.” Daltos has risen to his feet as well, his chair shoved away with a scraping sound that makes the hairs on the back of Parvis’ neck stand on end. “You should have just gone out fighting rather than _humiliating_ yourself like this in front of me.”

“At least Sparkles will know I didn't die being your bitch!” Parvis snaps in a ringing voice, his eyes narrowing.

“Oh, is that what you’re worried about?” Daltos leans forward with a smirk that’s grown a shade more malicious. It has Parvis swallowing, his mouth dry in the next second. “I can make that a condition.” 

“You _wouldn't_!” Parvis gapes at him. “I-”

“I could just have you go outside right now, to announce it. Better yet, you could shout it from the top of the dam.” Oh. Well. Parvis had expected something a lot _darker_ than that (really, Daltos should stop finding all of his preferences, he already knows too much).

“Okay, but you have to let everyone know that you're the one fucking me over,” Parvis counters with all the seriousness he can muster.

“That's public knowledge so there’s no point to me saying it out loud.”

“No, I want you to go outside and say, ‘I fucked Parvis in this room’. Those exact words had better come out of your mouth or else the truce is off.”

The two of them resume glaring at each other, having arrived at a standstill. A second later, one of them starts to snicker, the other joining in. It becomes laughter in no time flat, filling the tiny back room with it. 

“I don't think this is how truces supposed to go,” Parvis gasps between bouts of laughter.

“No, not to my knowledge, and I've brokered more truces than you,” Daltos remarks. They straighten up to glance at each other, grinning. “Alright, enough fucking around-” Parvis snorts, threatening to start laughing again. “Let’s take this seriously.”

“But I have been taking this seriously,” Parvis claims.

“I can tell my bandits to stay away. I don't mind doing that,” Daltos says, now looking and sounding serious again.

“You were so intent on taking the dam. Why have you changed your mind?” Parvis’ curiosity has popped out of its box while he was too busy laughing. 

“It ain't worth it. I got a better place to set my bandits up in mind. Also, Ravs would be pretty mad at me if I attacked you later.” At the mention of Ravs, Daltos looks nostalgic; the look is gone by the time Parvis has blinked.

“He really would be, if his friends were trying to kill each other-”

“Since when are we _friends_?”

“Ever since we started laughing together?” Parvis gives a helpless sort of shrug, his grin back in place. 

“You’re either the most foolhardy bandit I've ever met or the most cunning,” Daltos says after a beat, giving a slight shake of his head. Well, so long as Parvis sticks to his end of the truce even if he proclaims them friends, he has no problem with that. “Keep your fucking dam.”

“Wow, most people just usually call me an ‘idiot’ or a whole bunch of not very nice things,” Parvis observes in a pleased voice.

“In exchange, you don't ally with or help anyone I'm waging war against. It'd be bad if you got caught in the crossfire.”

“Thank you,” Parvis says, blinking at how the meeting had turned out better than he’d ever hoped. “That sounds good. Everyone else around here hates my guts so that won't really have any effect.”

“Don't thank me. Thank yourself.” Daltos replaces the chair. He holds out a hand to Parvis. Parvis takes his hand to shake it. The two of them separate, opening the door to emerge to their lieutenants seated around Ravs’ bar, nursing drinks and engaged in small talk with one another. 

“We’re done!” Parvis announces in a singsong voice. He bounces over to the bar, joining a relieved Sparkles.

Daltos nods at his lieutenants. “We’re leaving,” is all that he says. They know him well enough not to ask until they're back home or out of earshot.

As he approaches, Ravs glances over. “Have a drink before you go?” He proposes, giving him an imploring look.

Under his warm, kind gaze, Daltos defrosts with a tired sigh. “Fine, just one,” He relents, taking the seat Cant pulls out for him. They resume chattering nonsensically to Arado (who appears to be half-listening).

“I'll pay for it!” Parvis volunteers, slapping several dollar bills onto the counter. Ravs takes them, slipping them below the counter and pours Parvis a drink that he takes to toast to their newfound alliance.

Ravs peers closely at Daltos when passing him his usual drink (huh, he still remembers, even if it's been months since they last met up in person). Daltos takes the drink, downing it in steady gulps like it’s nothing more than water. Ravs passes back the confiscated digistruct modules that he and Parvis take.

“Easy there,” Ravs says, a warning in his undertone. “How’s Arsenal doing?” He innocently inquires.

“As well as anybody can be with only one leg left,” Daltos informs him. He gives Ravs an annoyed look for not asking the question that’s really on his mind.

“You doing okay?”

Daltos pushes the empty mug towards him. Where the fuck does he start? 

He’s been running on very little sleep these days, inclined to nod off during long trips that might have been his saving grace more than once. 

He’s tired of fighting. Several weeks of joining the battles is starting to take a bigger toll on him, the bandages around his latest wound aching with a soreness that would have made weaker willed people cringe with every slight movement.

He's so sick of mediating between his quarrelsome lieutenants who are incapable of sorting out disputes on their own. He's been skipping meals to catch up on sleep (it's not actual sleep if he ends up waking up more tired than when he went to sleep). 

What he’d like is nothing more than getting at least six hours of uninterrupted, proper sleep where nobody fucks up in the meantime.

On top of all that, he has a meeting with Sjin after this.

“I'm fine,” is what Daltos tells Ravs. 

He slides off the bar stool before Ravs can talk him around into opening up about his problems while his lieutenants are around to hear. It’d be easier to talk to him if it’s just the two of them somewhere private. Too bad time isn’t on his side so he can’t do that now.

Ravs frowns but doesn't call him out on his lie, taking his mug away. “Hey, take care. It was good seeing you again,” He says, softly. “The offer’s still good for whenever you feel like taking it up.” 

He’d forgotten about that, choosing to shelve it for when things ever get to that critical breaking point. He doubts it ever will (it’s still reassuring knowing it exists, though).

As Daltos is halfway to the door, one of the Bloody Bandits’ lieutenants (Sparkles, he thinks; he could be wrong but it's definitely the one with the ridiculous name) taps him on the shoulder. 

“Hey, I just want to let you know that Parvis thinks you're-” Hot, but mostly to ruin Parvis’ crush on him so he’ll stop being an idiot around him. 

What is it with Parvis and getting several crushes, Ravs being one of them, on multiple people (often at the _same time_ ), Sparkles doesn't know.

Appearing out of nowhere, Parvis claps both hands over Sparkles’ mouth. Sparkles tries to jerk out of his grip but Parvis is nothing but tenacious when he wants to be. His pride is on the line, after all.

“You're fantastic for coming is what I wanted you to know!” He blurts out. Daltos is also fantastic in other ways, but Parvis doesn't need to say that out loud. He carts Sparkles away to have strong words about not embarrassing him in front of other Bandit Lords and so forth.

Daltos stares. He decides it's not any of his business to know what the fuck is up with the Bloody Bandits’ chain of command or how they choose to operate.

\--

Meeting up with Sjin is still happening. Even after they've worked out the details of their deal, meeting up for drinks instead has slipped into his life and made itself comfortable. Daltos would really like to know exactly when it'd become a thing.

He doesn't mind. Sjin probably doesn't mind either. In fact, it appears Sjin looks forwards to the meetings.

Sjin tells him as much on the same day a few hours after that one meeting with Parvis went down. “It’s the only time I cut myself any slack in the week, you know. Running a company isn’t that easy and I assume it’s the same for you…?” He gives him a searching look.

Well thank fuck he's not making shitty assumptions. “You’re actually right for once. It ain’t easy running a bandit gang.”

“Oh?” Sjin peers at him with mild interest over the top of his wine glass. “Do tell.”

“Well, you got to keep all the bandits in line. I do that by making all the punishments very clear, no exceptions. Ever.”

“What kind of punishment?” Sjin only just barely manages to make his tone not dirty, opting instead for a knowing smirk.

“The kind that they instantly regret inciting and the kind that I don't mind getting my hands dirty for-” Sjin raises both eyebrows. “Don’t give me that look, that's why I started wearing gloves in the first place. And don’t believe whatever the cults say, because blood is _not_ anti-aging.”

That earns a laugh. Daltos smiles but he seems more worn out and less on edge than he usually is. It's endearing that he's not hiding it (for once). 

Sjin says to him, “I want to show you something on the roof.” 

He’d been saving it for a special occasion but he figures they both deserve the treat after the rough day they've both had, what with another dead end in his investigations and resulting in disappointment. He’ll keep trying. There's bound to be a breakthrough if he persists, right?

“Better not be a gun,” Daltos notes. Sjin does not know if he’s actually joking or not since Daltos is keeping a perfect, straight face.

Regardless, Sjin leads the way up onto the roof of the SipsCo. building. Opportunity isn’t the best place to stargaze, but Sjin’s examined the issue from multiple angles and consulted the ECHOnet for advice.

Ever since he bought the entire lot for dirt cheap, Opportunity’s been in the palm of his hand. It's his personal playground and at this hour, everyone else (save for Sherlock, bless his little cotton socks) has gone off back home. Nobody can complain if he fusses with the lighting for just one evening.

Sjin leads Daltos over to two waiting deck chairs, letting him choose which one to sit one. He takes the other. That done, he messages Sherlock downstairs to turn off all the lights so that the rooftop is plunged into complete darkness.

It’s a cool evening, the wind coming in crisp and light over the waters surrounding them. A vast canvas painted over with pinpricks of stars stretches across the night sky. He couldn't have asked for more perfect conditions. 

Sjin waves his own hand in front of his face; he can’t see it, lifting his face to the sky. The breathtaking view is not even spoiled by the giant H-shaped space station hovering next to Elpis.

“Question,” Daltos intones a minute later.

“Ask and you shall receive,” Sjin dutifully responds. 

“What the fuck am I supposed to be looking at?”

_Goddammit._

\--

It’s one of those rare nights where most of his bandits (the lucky ones not on night watch) get together and start bonfires out front.

Daltos usually preferred to skip those events, feeling out of place if he attends but well, Arsenal had insisted on dragging him along no matter what he says to try to get out of the invitation. That’s how he is now sitting next to Arsenal helping him throw logs onto a roaring fire.

There’s booze and food as always, days of scavenging and emptying out designated stashes going towards this one night. Arsenal presses a bottle of murky rakk ale into his hands before grabbing his own.

The smell of roasting, charred meat fills the air alongside burning wood. Across from  
the two of them (seated on ammo crates) are Klemm and Fieseler helping themselves to the booze as well. The other lieutenants are nearby, gathered around other bonfires and generally making nuisances of themselves, judging by Hawker’s hollering and Hurricane’s attempts to get their twin to shut up and eat.

To cover up the fact that he’s not eating, Daltos drinks instead, raising the bottle to drain it slowly every minute or so. Arado offers him a blackened thing on a stick that might have been a rakk wing at some point.

He declines. Arado shrugs and tears into it, teeth easily ripping off the cooked leathery bits. 

The noise levels remain constant, a steady pulse of conversation punctuated by the occasional song, shout or yell; there’s an unspoken rule of ‘no brawling’ in play for tonight so for once, everyone’s behaving. Daltos lets it wash over him, finding himself growing more relaxed as the night wears on.

Arsenal keeps up a commentary that Daltos finds he doesn't mind. One of Klemm’s own bandits launches into a story to fill in the silence. Sure enough, at the merest hint of a story, Cant’s towering behind Arado, listening in. Bucker plonks himself down next to Arsenal, rosy-cheeked from the heat of the fire and all the rakk ale he’s drunk.

The story earns a smattering of applause, before another bandit stands up to nitpick it; Klemm intervenes before the two can fight. Somebody else tells another story that might have been true, no, it’s a lie, no, they can swear on their mum and mate’s graves...and so on.

Daltos half-listens, until Arado asks Klemm, “Hey, haven't you seen some weird shit in your life? Some of those would make great stories.”

Klemm scratches at his neck, mildly embarrassed. “It ain't much, I’ve just been around longer than most of you,” He modestly says. Fieseler nudges him, mumbling something that only he can hear.

Arsenal yells, “Speak up!”

Klemm translates, “Fieseler wants me to tell you about the one time I ran into these alien things.”

A murmur of interest ripples out amongst them. “Go on!” Someone shouts in encouragement (it might have been Hawker or Hurricane).

Clearing his throat, Klemm begins his story in a pleased rumble that draws them all in. “This was back before I started running with the Blighters and met Fieseler-”

“How old are you again?” Arado interrupts.

“About forty,” Klemm easily replies before continuing, “Pandoran thunderstorms aren't nothing to laugh at, as you all know. On this one night, the convoy I was traveling with got split into two when the floods hit us out on the low lying flats.”

“I assume he means a caravan,” mumbles Arsenal under his breath.

“...So we were cut off and desperate to find shelter before the supplies got wet and the technicals kicked the bucket. We found a tunnel leading into a mountain-”

“You found Skagzilla?” Hawker shouts. There’s a thump as Hurricane presumably wrestles them back onto their seat.

“Nah, just a cave.” Klemm smiles. “A rather well rounded out one too. Didn't seem like any skag could have dug it out, it was that neat.”

“It could have been a really tidy skag,” Bucker points out. Laughter ensues. 

Klemm snorts, revealing calmly, “That cave was about as big as Arsenal’s cargo bay.” Stunned silence replaces laughter.

“Nah, not possible-”

“You’re making this shit up-”

“Cant!” Cant booms, glaring at the bandits who have dared to interrupt. They fall quiet, muttering apologies.

“You camped in it?” Arado guesses. 

“Only shelter around for miles,” Klemm affirms. “We just left the technicals to dry out and wasted about half a box of matches before we could even get a fire started. We had about fifteen of us in the cave. Three drew the sticks for watch and the rest of us tried to sleep.”

“Tried?”

Klemm leans forward, the light of the fire causing him to look menacing for a moment. Some of the bandits cluster closer together, pressing up against one another. “It felt like something was watching us,” He says.

Beside Daltos, Arsenal makes a strangled sound of horror, his hand finding Daltos’ arm to latch onto him for comfort. Daltos is tempted to shake him off but leaves him be in favor of listening. Klemm’s never told this story before.

“What did I do?” Klemm mimes rolling over in his sleep. “I tossed, turned and finally gave up. Turns out that the rest of us couldn't sleep either. I looked up and hey, two of the lads we posted on watch had vanished.”

Daltos thinks of prying Arsenal’s hand off his arm if he starts to grip any harder.

“Third guy told us they found a little passageway going deeper into the mountain.” Klemm sighs. “So we gathered up our stuff and went in after them.” His voice doesn't waver but he frowns. 

“Oh no,” Arsenal groans, under his breath.

“It was so dark in there, not even the flashlights at max could light up the whole tunnel. We walked for a long time and it was so silent, all you could hear was the sound of your own heart once you got used to everybody's footsteps and breathing.” Klemm pauses to drink from a canteen, causing a collective groan to break out.

“Cant,” Cant moans, impatiently.

“I'm getting there, don't worry,” Klemm says. “About, I think, thirty metres in, we found-”

“A dead body!” Donier screams, laughing maniacally after. Daltos yanks his arm out of Arsenal’s hand before Arsenal can break it, just in time since Arsenal flinches and yelps.

Cant flings a buzzaxe in Donier’s direction. It pings off a metal object and harmlessly into the night. Someone scrambles after it to retrieve it. Donier scoffs. “Wow, somebody doesn't like jump scares-”

“Donier, if you don't want to hear the story, go away and jerk off, you jerk,” Hurricane retorts. Snickers arise as Bucker stands to deal with the two.

Everyone else turns back to Klemm. “Not a dead body, but a piece of flesh.” He holds out both chapped hands to demonstrate how big. “It was about as white as the back of your eyes. I reckon one of the sentries jabbed whatever got them with a knife and took it off.” He puts down his hands.

“Nothing around here’s got white flesh,” Arado muses. 

“Yeah, it was a real sight. It was all purple, stringy muscle underneath when I flipped it over with a bayonet.” Klemm sighs. “I would have picked it up if it hadn't been for one of the other bandits telling me they’d shoot my hand off if I touched it.”

“And _then_?” Someone impatiently demands.

“We kept walking and Donier’s right. We did find a dead body, which belonged to one of the sentries.”

Arsenal’s hand is back on Daltos’ arm. Daltos grumbles at Arsenal, “If you bruise my arm, I’ll punch you.”

“Okay,” Arsenal whispers. “Fair price to pay because Arado would skin me alive if I did that to him.”

“The body was cut up real bad, like someone had gone to town on it with a machete or a bayonet, holes everywhere in the chest and a whole lotta blood leaking out,” Klemm says. “There was no way in hell our sentry would have survived. At that point, half of us went back, spooked and carrying the poor body.”

“Did you keep walking?”

“Course.” Klemm snorts. “I wanted to know what killed the guy and kill it. So we kept going and this bloody thing comes flying out at us in the dark not too long after and hey, it's our missing guy!”

Arsenal lets out a relieved sound, as with everybody else who’s on edge. “Great, I came back just in time for the happy ending!” Bucker claps both hands, settling down on his ammo create once more.

Klemm smiles, sadly. “He wasn't alone.”

“You're shitting me.” Bucker and almost everyone gapes at him. Daltos pries Arsenal’s hand off him.

“I ain't no good at describing things but what followed him was an insect-like, human shaped thing as tall as me. Its face was like something out of a wax factory, all dolled up and black eyed…” Klemm vaguely draws an outline in the air, letting out a frustrated sound at his inability to find the words he needs.

“Draw a picture,” Arado suggests, pointing to the ground.

Klemm catches the stick someone tosses at him, scratching out a crude picture with it. “I ain't an artist but it looked something like that.”

Daltos doesn't know what the fuck he’s looking at. 

It’s certainly humanoid figure, the limbs stretched out thin to the point of ridiculousness, the abdomen distended and insect-like perched on two thin legs ending in claws. The neck is elongated and on the end of it is a doll-like, empty face exactly like Klemm described. 

“Out of the dark comes flying about ten or so of these things,” Klemm continues. “We legged it, including the sentry. Those things could _fly_ but we had a running start.”

“Please tell me you made it out alive,” begs someone off to the side. 

Their friend snorts. “Course he did! How else would he be sitting here to tell the story?”

“Do you kill any?”

“There wasn't any point to shooting those things, by the way.” Klemm shakes his head. “The whole cavern started to fill up with these buggers, so we just climbed into the technicals and sped off, fuck the rain. I don’t know how long we drove for but we found an empty town and stayed there in one of the buildings, just waiting for the things to find us and kill us. Fun night.”

“Did they…?”

“Nah. I reckon they stopped when we got out of the mountain.”

“Do you know where this place is?” 

“Couldn't tell you. It’s better off that way, I think. Things we don't know about should be left well enough alone.”

“Is that the end of the story?” Bucker translates for Cant, who seems saddened, their head drooping.

“Yep. I got another one though, about a Siren I saw once, if anybody wants to hear that?” Cant nods so enthusiastically that their mask buckles jingle. “She had red hair and popped in and out of existence like it was nothing…and no, I can't say if she was hot, I ain't into women...”

Daltos sees that his bottle of rakk ale is finally empty. He stands up, causing Arsenal to sharply glance at him. “You turning in for the night?”

”Yeah, I'm tired,” Daltos simply says, making his way over to an airlock, managing to avoid tripping over anything or anyone in his way.

“Sleep well,” Arsenal bids, turning back to the bonfire and to hear Klemm regale them with the one time he almost got set on fire by a Siren.

Cant and the others wave at Daltos; he raises an acknowledging hand before stepping inside and disappearing from view. He can get the rest of the story from Klemm later. It’s sleepytime.

\--

“The Vaults?” Daltos shakes his head. “I’ve heard of them and frankly, it’s a load of bullshit.”

So many retorts are on the tip of Sjin's tongue. He swallows them all, opting to smile a secretive smile. It’s clear that Daltos has no interest in them. Perhaps it’s for the best it stays that way. 

“If you find out anything, would you be willing to pass any information onto me?” Sjin inquires.

“It’s unlikely, but sure.” Daltos doesn't even ask why he's so interested in the Vaults. The talk turns to the future. 

“What do you plan to do with the rest of your life?”

“I’ll just keep conquering until there’s nothing left to conquer.”

“And then what?”

“I don’t know. I suppose there’s always a good chance that I’ll die before then.”

“Don't you ever worry about what’ll happen after you die? Or what comes after death?”

“Not really.” Sjin envies him for his carefree outlook in regards to that. What’s his secret?

Meanwhile, Daltos is thinking of how to murder Bachem in the most painful way possible for continual counts of friendly fire racking up over the past week or so. One of those had almost taken him out if it hadn't been for his shield.

That train of thought leads to the usual itch, causing it to grow too stubborn to ignore this time. 

“Hey, can I smoke?” Daltos asks, hating that it has to come to this. If he grips the bottle of rakk ale any harder, it is going to fracture into a hundred pieces and inevitably cut him on the hand, as well as get glass everywhere on Sjin’s immaculate carpet. 

“You smoke?” Sjin doesn't seem to be too bothered about the fact.

“Yes, I know it's a bad habit and no, I don't plan on quitting soon,” Daltos informs him, fetching what he needs from his inventory.

“Would you like a cigar?” Sjin flips one of his drawers open to search it. “I have a box here that's brand-new.”

“Nah, I prefer cigarettes.” Daltos has never tried them nor ever plans to. He tries to coax a flame from his dying lighter, hoping that it’ll cooperate one last time. It gives off a spark before nothing else happens when he flicks the switch again. Sighing, he says, “Fuck, my lighter’s finally dead.”

“Here, let me.” Sjin withdraws a lighter from the depths of the cigar box, holding it out with the flame lit.

“Thanks.” Daltos takes the lighter, examining it more closely by turning it this way and that under the light. “Fancy looking lighter you got here. A good quality one, too.” He lights his cigarette.

“You can have it.” It'd been intended as a gift for someone else but Sjin sees no point in hanging onto it when he doesn't smoke. At least this way will see it gets some use, right?

“What's the occasion?” Daltos seems almost suspicious at Sjin’s goodwill but puts away the lighter. 

Sjin shrugs. “Consider it a belated gift to commemorate the start of our deal.”

\--

It might have been because he’s drank more than his fair share of alcohol or he's feeling the cutting edge of loneliness more so than usual, to seek attention in all the wrong ways, but Sjin turns to Daltos.

He coyly asks him in a brusque manner that his sober self would have winced at, given how indelicate his wording is, “So, is it true you were banging one of the other captains? Dahl likes to turn a blind eye so long as their soldiers don’t let it affect-” 

Their work, he’d been about to say, if he hadn’t been cut off by what happens in the next second.

Daltos has leaned across the desk to grab him by the collar and haul him closer so that they’re face to face (he smells of smoke and nothing else).

“And I hear you’re nursing a hard-on for that other CEO of yours.” His tone is brimming with sarcasm fit to give even a drunk Sjin enough pause to rethink his approach.

 _How did he know_. “T-touché,” Sjin concedes. “Looks like we’ve both done our research.” He is not in any position to back down, spurred on by such a response from him. 

“You and I are going to forget what we’ve just said to one another and I won’t crack your head open on this table. So, let’s start again on a better note, shall we?” Sjin nods. 

Daltos lets go of him to pull out a cigarette and light it up (using the lighter he'd been gifted, Sjin is pleased to see).

“Your reputation certainly precedes you, amongst other things,” Sjin says, rubbing at his neck. _Sore topic, much?_

“Sjin, what did I just _say_.” The warning is clear but Sjin wants to find out how far he can push his luck today. 

“Alright, I won’t do it again.” He pauses dramatically. “I’m sorry.”

Daltos huffs at the blatant insincerity in his voice. “Don't fucking lie about being sorry when you’re not.”

“No, I really am.” One of Sjin’s hands moves to take Daltos’ own as he leans over. “Let me make it up to you-” 

“Sjin.” The gloved hand he’d been reaching for withdraws out of reach. 

“That’s the second time you’ve used my name today, I’m flattered.” Oh, if only he could get him to use his name _more_. 

“I’m going to leave and possibly get very drunk to forget this ever happened, so this meeting is postponed until next time.” Still smoking, Daltos stands, striding towards the exit.

“You can’t just leave-” Sjin protests, rising as well.

Daltos whirls around to snap at him, “You can blame that on yourself because I am _this_ close to shooting you.” If words existed, his would have crackled with rage.

He doesn't even bother to slam the door on his way out but that might have been because the door is made out of thin, expensive and decorative glass that would have shattered on impact.

Smoke trails out after him, lingering in the air as a piece of him left behind to make Sjin miserable and regretting making such a strong advance.

The next time they meet, they both pretend it’d never happened.

\--

“Another wedding invitation?” Sjin hands the impossibly pristine, crisp white envelope to Sips, noting in an admiring voice, “It even came as a proper letter this time instead of an email.” Sips flips the letter over to peer at the wax seal on the back. “Must be super important, so you should probably take a look.”

That’s one way to get Sips to look at it without throwing it straight into the paper shredder under his desk. 

Sips takes the lit cigar out of his mouth to rest it on the ashtray on his desk, tearing the envelope open (disregarding the wax seal and letter opener entirely). He fishes out the invitation, letting it unfurl. 

He snorts after scanning the text with a critical eye, crumpling up the letter to lob it into the trash can.

“Booyah, did you see that?” Sips brags, pumping his fist into the air.

“Yes, that was very impressive. You’re not going?” Sjin just likes going because he gets to show off. Sips, less so and only if he knows there’ll be dancing so he can show off the ol’ razzle dazzle of his moves. 

“Nah, it’s just somebody posturing by inviting all the big mining companies. I bet you my gold tooth that they’ve invited Flux Inc. and all those other assholes as well,” Sips drawls, retrieving his cigar to chew on the end of it. 

“It might be fun,” Sjin points out, some of his enthusiasm bleeding through in his tone.

“I got better things to do with my time, like reading the back of the cereal box and figuring out the crossword.” Sips thoughtfully adds, “We should probably invest in something other than cereal. Put that on the agenda.”

“What would you do if you threw a wedding?” Sjin slyly asks, handing him a report before penciling in ‘discuss other breakfast options’ on tomorrow’s schedule. Sherlock is so very going to be confused by that. 

Sips barely glances at the report abstract before signing it off and tossing it into his ‘Out’ pile. 

“Just between you and me, Sjin?” He glances left and right before leaning over to Sjin.

“Go on, I’m listening.”

“I’ll never get married or have kids,” Sips admits, “So all I got going for me is money and a corporation worth a billion big ones and we’re almost there.” 

He shoots him a triumphant grin but he turns away to spin in his chair to face the window, missing Sjin’s shattered expression.

“I...see,” Sjin says, careful to keep his disappointment out of his voice; it’s a testament as to how long Sips has known him to at least guess something is wrong.

“You coming down with something? Better not be plague.” Disgust slips into Sips’ voice, joined by a wrinkle of his nose. “That’s popular on the east coast these days. You can have the rest of the day off.” 

“Thank you. I’ll do that.” Sjin sounds distant, which slides right by Sips' notice. Sips lets his gaze land on the pile of business cards propped up in their handsome holder on his desk. 

He drawls a moment later, “Also, why don’t you send the lucky couple, threesome or foursome or whatever’s happening one of our business cards with the words ‘SUCK IT’ written on the back.” There’s a pause as he mulls over his inflammatory gesture and how to make it more grand. “And maybe add in smaller script, ‘not a wedding reservation’, _and_ it’ll make them think twice about sending us passive-aggressive Mercenary Day cards because those always suck.”

“Will do,” Sjin says, mechanically. At the back of his mind, there's the faintest stirring of hope that Sips might change his mind someday. “Here, sign this. Sherlock will pick it up later.” 

He picks up whatever is in the ‘Out’ tray, gathering it up in his arms and is halfway across the room before Sips can call him back over.

Sips flips a pen in his fingers, his brow furrowing. Bad idea, his fingers are too stubby and thick to get enough of a purchase, so the pen flies across the room and straight into the back of Sjin’s head. It bounces off and hits the floor, rolling onto the carpet. 

Sjin reacts by yelping, rubbing the back of his head and turning, his eyes already brimming over with tears. Sips wipes his face of all emotion, assuming erroneously that the pen had hit Sjin in a bald spot or something, hence the tears.

“The bird outside did it,” Sips claims. He reaches under the desk to haul a bottle of rakk ale out of the mini-fridge there, playing off the incident as nonchalantly as he can. Sjin scoops the pen up and walks out of the room. 

Shit, he’ll have to send a ‘get well’ card. He's never been good at apologies but that's why he keeps Sherlock around for blunders like this; that secretary of his is a savant with words.

\--

Sjin’s forced to don reading glasses when whatever he reads makes him adopt a squint.

It's irrational but he worries about Daltos making fun of him if he ever sees him with them on. After that one incident with the microbrewery being mentioned, he's not especially keen to repeat any variation of it. 

He always takes them off before Daltos arrives, even if he has to try to decipher words with some minor difficulty.

He tends to forgets the glasses are there on his face once he's had them on long enough. The glasses are made out of the highest quality, virtually weightless material money could buy. They're prescription but they also double as sunglasses (a worthless feature but it's nice knowing it's there).

As such, he thinks he's taken them off when Sherlock ECHOs him to let him know (sounding as harried as always) that Daltos is downstairs.

Sjin yawns and stretches, taking his time. In the process, he jostles the glasses and that's when his error hits him, slamming his heart straight into his ribs. If bounces off to lodge in his throat where it makes his mouth go dry. 

That's also the exact moment Daltos walks into his office. His usual seat is the one on the left (on Sjin’s right). Once he's sat down, he looks at Sjin, saying nothing. Nothing’s changed much about him, appearance wise since they last met. 

Sjin stammers out a greeting, failing to play it cool as cold sweat pours down his neck and head. “H-hi. How are you this fine day?”

Daltos replies with something generic, still looking straight at him. _Distract him_ , Sjin's mind screams at him. He remembers a report of the eridium extraction process he’d been reading, deciding to try to explain it, fumbling over every unfamiliar and second word in the process.

As the conversation proceeds, not once does Daltos comment on the glasses perched on Sjin’s face. He barely says anything when he’s concentrating, actually. The only time he ever speaks up is to ask questions. Sjin answers them, of course, as best as he can under these nerve-racking circumstances.

The meeting comes to an end when Daltos stands, saying that he has to leave; he’ll see Sjin at the usual time next week. Once he’s gone, it hits Sjin like a smack to the face because he’s been worrying for no reason. 

Daltos hadn’t even _noticed_ he’d been wearing glasses.

At this point in time, Sherlock has since stopped looking so terrified of the bandit whenever he walks in through the front door of the SipsCo. office. He’s never been able to eliminate the fear which lurks at the back of his mind constantly reminding him that all it’ll take is one bullet to end his pitiful life. 

What Sjin sees in the bandit, Sherlock will never understand.

Once the bandit’s gone, Sherlock ascends the stairs and walks into his boss’s office to find Sjin looking extraordinarily pale, the neck collar of his shirt soaked (a common problem amongst executives and office workers, apparently).

He hesitates to disturb him but he really needs him to sign the paperwork so that he can send it off and go home to his only safe refuge from the madness that’s Pandora. Not that it really matters when he lives in a penthouse just across from the bridge leading to the building.

“Are you alright, Sjin?” It'd be bad if Sjin keeled over but some small part of Sherlock hopes that before he dies, Sjin will find it in his to-be cold, dead heart to release him from SipsCo.’s employment. If he wants to be super optimistic, that includes a lifetime ban.

Sjin looks perfectly healthy, unfortunately.

“‘m fine,” He mumbles, sounding mortified. Without saying another word, he slides off his office chair and under his desk. Sherlock can hear him moving about under there so he hasn't fainted. 

Sherlock takes the bit about assuming ‘Sjin is fine’ back, hovering by his desk with apprehension lining his features. The papers are still in his hands.

“I’ll just leave the paperwork here.” He dumps it all into the ‘In’ tray. Fuck it, he’ll collect it tomorrow morning since it looks like Sjin isn’t in the mood to deal with it either.

Hands massaging his traitorous eyes (screw being short sighted), Sjin considers getting laser eye surgery if it means avoiding another situation like this. He’d gotten lucky this time. Next time might not be so forgiving. 

Having the pleasure of wearing glasses is just _not_ worth that risk.

\--

“We are way too drunk for this game,” Daltos states, tossing his game piece at Sjin. “What kind of fucking game is this, anyway?”

The piece catches in Sjin’s hair. He extracts it, putting it back down where he thinks it originally was. “Monopoly, except I made it myself. Are you going to roll?”

“I quit, it's impossible to win, seeing as everything I do serves to benefit _you_.” The die is flicked at him next. Since Daltos’ aim is off, it goes flying off into parts unknown. 

“Stop flicking things at me!” Sjin smiles, all too willing to pretend that's not how the game is intended to go. “You're just being a sore loser.”

“I am _not_ a sore loser.”

“Somebody's getting real salty over losing five hundred back there.”

“Only because you can't stand losing so you made a game that guarantees a win for you.”

“One more game. I'll even give myself a handicap,” Sjin cajoles, trying to keep a straight face or else the jig’s up.

“No. I will set this game on fucking _fire_ if it means never playing it again.”

“Fine, what do you want to play?”

“I play this all the time with my lieutenants: truth or dare. Don't get your hopes up, we added an extra twist.” Daltos fishes around in his inventory, pulling out a Jakobs revolver to place it onto Sjin’s desk. “If you can't answer truth or do the dare, you have to put that to your head and pull the trigger-”

“I'm not playing that!” Sjin stares at the revolver, aghast.

“Shut up, I wasn't done explaining the rules.” Daltos holds up both his hands. “There's a one in six chance the gun actually shoots. You're allowed a shield. If the gun actually fires, it'll just give you a nasty headache. That's always a right riot.” He puts his hands down to give him a wry look. “So, still want to play or not? Or are you too chicken?”

“I'll play!” Sjin says, offended that he thinks he's too cowardly to play. “Are you going first?”

“Sure, I’ll go first,” Daltos offers, grinning. “I pick truth.”

“Is that grey streak in your hair natural?”

“What the fuck are you talking about? Of course it’s natural!”

“I didn't think it actually was,” Sjin admits with a giggle. So much for weeks of suspecting otherwise. “Truth.”

“What _really_ turns you on?”

“You can't ask that!”

“Fess up Sjin, or else you'll have to put that gun to your head if you don't want me to know any super secret kinks you have.”

“You're enjoying this way too much.”

“That's precisely the reason why I like this game. It brings out the best in people.” Smirking, Daltos watches Sjin open his mouth, then close it as his face is turning redder by the second.

“...I like it when people have really nice arm hair,” Sjin shamefully confesses, covering his face with both hands.

“That wasn't so hard. Dare me.”

“I got one. Take off everything above your waist.” Sjin does not expect Daltos to do it. Daltos stands up.

“That could have gone _very_ differently.” Daltos pulls off his gloves, dropping them onto the desk. Sjin’s mouth drops open as Daltos performs an upper body striptease with no hesitation, his jacket and shirt following the way of his gloves. “Done,” He declares.

It takes Sjin a few seconds for his mind and mouth to sync up again. “Wow, you really don't have any shame, do you?”

“Trust me, you can't keep my lot in line otherwise.” Daltos starts pulling on his clothes, fastening his gloves before sitting down with a smug air. Sjin tugs at his collar; the room’s air is just tad more stifling, not helped by his mad blushing. “Also, I'm really _drunk_ , so that helps.”

Sjin has trouble picking his jaw up off the floor, only managing to do so when he realises Daltos is looking expectantly at him. “Truth,” He chooses, glad his voice doesn't waver.

“If you pick dare, I'll pick an easy one.”

“Next time, but I make no guarantees.”

“Why did you ask me to take off my shirt?” Daltos sits down again.

“Now you're just rubbing it in,” Sjin points out. “I asked only because I didn't think you'd actually _do_ it.”

“It's okay if all you wanted to know was if my guns can get you going,” Daltos dryly says, only to smirk. “So, do they qualify or-”

“Moving on!” Sjin almost shouts. “Dare, please.”

There's a tilt to Daltos’ head and a devious gleam in his eyes that wasn't there earlier. It sets off red flags in Sjin’s mind. 

“I want you to steal water from Oasis.” That's on a different scale to what Sjin had imagined, for a dare. Everything else has been for a lark, but _this_. 

“I refuse,” Sjin flatly says, glaring at him.

His smirk not budging, Daltos motions with an empty hand to the revolver that's on the desk between them. “You know the rules.”

It's not easy picking up the revolver, especially when every fibre of Sjin’s being can't help but cringe at the thought of self-harm. His hand wants nothing to do with the instrument of death and pain, while his resolve drives him to curl his fingers around the grip to lift it up off the desk.

Sjin doesn't mind Jakobs but their kick when shooting really prevents him from enjoying their effectiveness more. The craftsmanship, on the other hand, is simply gorgeous. Even their lower end tiered guns in looks outdid the other manufacturers. 

The weight of the gun is comfortable in his hands, neither too heavy nor too light. It feels like he's been using this gun for years. 

Well, Sjin has no idea how Daltos wants him to shoot himself but he copies what's seen countless times in movies: pointing the barrel straight at his own head so that it's almost touching his skin.

Daltos says nothing to correct him so he takes it as a sign that he's good. The cold, curved metal of the gun's trigger is digging into the crook of his index finger. He tries not to think about anyone who might have died holding this same gun.

Sweat beads at his hairline, dribbling down as Sjin steels himself. He can't bear to look Daltos in the eye, his vision going black from closing his eyes. His finger tenses against the trigger. 

At the last second, he peels away from the gun, lowering it. He can't do it. Shame boils inside of him.

How the fuck did bandits do it, constantly brushing with death only to laugh about it a few seconds after? It's _madness_ and by God, it's contagious but Sjin isn't that far gone as to play chicken with a potentially loaded gun.

“You chickened out,” Daltos says, sounding disappointed but looking like he'd been expecting it. 

Sjin doesn't grace him with a response, only bringing up his HUD to email Pandora’s largest importer of water a hefty bribe in regards to Oasis. He gets a response in a few seconds: the company is accepting the payment.

“Done,” A triumphant looking Sjin announces in a soft voice, smiling at Daltos. “You get all the diverted water.” How strange, Daltos looks almost guilty. A shake of his head wipes the look, replacing it with a faint smile.

“Looks like I underestimated you,” is all he evenly says, holding his hand out for the revolver. Sjin returns it to him without a word, glad to be rid of it and the game being over.

The stain on Sjin’s sleeve grows, just a fraction; except it now includes civilian casualties, a slightly different sort of stain that is still tainted. Not that it makes any difference, paling in comparison to the lake that comprises of Daltos’ one.

It comes as no surprise that obviously, he is a terrible influence. Sjin finds that he doesn't care.

\--

“Have you ever thought of shaving that moustache and beard of yours?” Sips tilts his head, squinting at Sjin with the look of someone he's trying his hardest to imagine him without both.

“No, I have not,” Sjin replies. He's never thought about it, having grown both out ever since the first hairs had prickled his face. He can count the number of times he’s ever shaved on one hand.

“Maybe you'd look better without it? I dunno, just something to think about.” Sips yawns after that off-handed comment, putting down his pen. “You can head home first, I got to wrestle this induction presentation into looking like it’s emerged from the depths of clip art hell, just for Sherlock.”

“Put it in neon colours,” Sjin carefully suggests. “And add a picture of that one wrestler everybody knows on the first slide.”

“You know what, I fucking will.” Sips hefts his keyboard and mouse closer, cracking his neck.

“See you later,” Sjin bids, closing the door gently. Once he gets home, he stares at himself in the bedroom mirror, contemplating how to best do it as he studies his own face. 

He doesn't own a beard trimmer but Sips does. Sips won't be home for another two hours. Sjin slips into Sips' bathroom, closing the door after himself. He finds the beard trimmer resting on its rack besides the bottle of cologne and shaving cream.

The beard trimmer hums along his skin, sending curls of hair floating onto his shirt and into the sink. It's slow work but he has patience on his side. Fifteen minutes later, he returns the beard trimmer to its rack and looks at himself, properly.

He looks so _young_. 

The worst part is that he doesn't recognise himself until he runs a hand over his chin and cheeks to check. 

Sjin lingers in the bathroom, cleaning up and dumping all of the collected hair into the bin. Right, time to sort out dinner. 

Without his beard and moustache, he's not quite himself. It feels like he's walking around in someone else’s body, peering through their vision and watching them prepare dinner.

A clueless Sips breezes into the kitchen two hours later. “Hey, Sjin, what are we eating tonight, because-” He catches sight of Sjin and freezes.

“We’re having lasagna. I hope that's okay with you,” Sjin says, putting the kitchen timer he’d been absently fiddling with to one side. 

Sips swallows. Turns, his feet angling towards the other hallway like he's intending to walk out, shifting towards him now, as if having changed his mind. Sjin watches him tread the length of the kitchen to where he's sitting at the bench.

“I- _Christ_ , Sjin.” Sips utters a hollow laugh, running a shaking hand through his hair. “I didn't think you’d.” A hand gestures to his own, clean-shaven and stubbly face. His hand drops to his side.

He looks stricken, so out of his depth that Sjin shifts, becoming aware of the gravity of his decision. It's not like Sips to ever have the wind taken out of his sails. It's part of why Sjin likes him so much; he's hard to faze, or so he thought.

“What do you think?” Sjin breaks the ice, running his hand over the lower half of his face (for what is probably the umpteeth time). “I look rather dashing-” He stops because Sips is still looking like his foundations have been ripped out from under him.

“Sjin, _why_?”

“I felt like a change,” Sjin lies, giving a shrug. It’s no big deal (a lie), so why…?

“If it was because of what I said, I didn't mean it.” Sips comes closer, resting a heavy hand onto his shoulder. “You didn't have to do that, that was just a _joke_.” His voice causes Sjin's heart to shrink a size, his body feeling a size too large for it. “I'm sorry-”

“You're joking, right?” Sjin delivers a pleading look. 

Sips’ hand goes still where it's on his shoulder. “I’m not,” He says in the quietest voice Sjin’s ever heard him use in the history of all their time of knowing each other.

“Well, it'll grow back,” Sjin says, forcing himself to sound and look optimistic.

“Just.” Sips takes his hand away, shaking his head. “Please, don’t ever do that again. Don't force yourself to change because of what I say.”

There are no more jokes about appearances, after.

\--

It's been a week since Daltos caught a blasted cold and Cant is _still_ camping outside of his room. Sometimes it's Arado standing guard. Other times, it's Klemm. His lieutenants have been taking it in turns to guard his door. 

They've been doing it without his knowledge, or as best they can. Whenever he catches them, they all make up some sort of excuse that just so happens to conveniently place them outside his room.

For fuck’s sake, a cold isn't going to kill him. The most it does is keep him confined to his own room for hours on end while he sleeps it off, as he always does whenever he gets injured, tired, drunk or falls into whatever state where it's the only thing to do.

Not wanting to inflict the same hell onto his own bandits, self-quarantine had been the only option before it could really kick in. How did he know he'd been about to get sick?

He'd been standing in a room where everyone else has mostly stripped down to as few layers as possible, even with the vents fully cranked open for airflow and he's the only one who thinks it’s _freezing_.

Daltos isn't doing it to be kind. It'd just spell bad news if half his bandits got downed because of a cold that spread because he didn't want to take simple precautions. It only takes a single sick person to bring down the others. 

Last time he checked, bandits may have more robust immune systems than most people but they could still fall to infection, disease and injuries left unchecked.

Thankfully, he's got everything he needs tucked away in his own room so he never has to venture out. Captains’ rooms came with a bathroom so if he has to throw up or something, it's without people gawking, compared to the troop bathrooms.

His lieutenants don't get the concept of ‘sequestering himself away to spare them the same fate’. 

The first night had involved minor tussles in front of his room to see who'd draw first watch. He'd ECHOed them (not a very pleasant task, seeing as his throat had felt like fine slivers of glass had lodged all along it) to tell them to piss off. Half an hour later, Arsenal had knocked on his door. 

“You doing okay in there?” He’d yelled, his voice partially muffled by the thick metal.

He responded by messaging him with:

> cancel the meetings, i got a cold  
> also, fuck my life  
> tell them to leave me alone  
> that includes you  
> you’re in charge, by the way

That had been all he'd been able to manage sending. Arsenal had wandered off (to hopefully spread the word). Daltos settles down to be miserable for however long it takes until his body stops griping.

The second night had been quieter, only because it's Arado being discrete. By ‘discrete’, he means Arado’s presence sticking out like a sore thumb with all their restless pacing.

Cant had somehow curled up and slept in front of his door on the third night. He knows because he'd heard Bucker settling down outside as well, flopping down onto a portable cot he'd lugged up for that sole purpose. He can hear Bucker murmuring a story to Cant to stop them from growing bored. It lulls them and him to sleep.

Fuck being a light sleeper. At least with his cold, it'd pulled him under in a deep sleep. In such a deep sleep, he's too vulnerable. The chances of anybody managing to kill him then triples. Yes, he can wake up but whether or not he can react in time is debatable.

Maybe that's why his lieutenants chose to keep watch (or the ones who feel like he's worth having around, at any rate). They know.

Daltos can't say for sure that it really works. Still, it's somewhat reassuring to know that they've got his back (however temporarily it is, since even temperamental Donier takes a watch but only with Hawker and Hurricane posted alongside him for extra security).

Repeat, lather, rinse, until one day, he wakes up and he feels fine. No sore throat, no coughing, his mind is clear and not overheated mush, no aches in his bones, no shivering even though he's got all of his blankets out, it's _great_. 

First thing he does is shower and change out of the clothes he’d been wearing nonstop for the past few days. He’d cut back on laundry by sleeping half-naked. It sucks when he's sick but he's never asked anybody to do his own laundry for him and he's not about to start anytime soon.

The second thing he does is eat something without leaving half of it for later. It's surprising how being sick either cuts his appetite in half or doubles it. Also, drink. He knows he's lost most of his fluids via sweat or something like that. It’d suck if he died because of dehydration, after going through all of that.

He opens his door and almost trips over Cant. Cant grunts when he accidentally kicks them in the arm, sitting up to stare at him. They lunge for him but he'd anticipated that. He steps out of grabbing range.

“Cant!” They exclaim, delighted to see him in person for the first time in days. Never mind that this isn't the first time they reacted like this to his absences.

“Yes, I’m alive,” He observes in his driest tone. Cant leans down to investigate his state by putting him under close, personal scrutiny.

Their fingers brush against the streak of grey in his hair (the fucking thing has actually grown out by a few millimetres, much to his irritation when he'd checked his reflection earlier).

“Cant,” They state, perhaps declaring he's fine and drawing away.

“Thank you for the prognosis, doctor Cant.” Cant aims a cheeky swat at him for that. He dodges it before it can collide, heading towards the meeting room. 

Arado feigns being shocked to see him out of bed. “Sleep well, sleeping beauty?” Arado comments, a grin flashing at him from under their helmet. 

“Yeah, first time I've ever been able to sleep well. Was it you who kept watch on the first night?”

Arado shakes their head with a slow deliberation that indicates they’re lying. “Nope, must have confused me for someone else.” 

Cant helps them out by tugging on Daltos’ sleeve and nodding eagerly. “Cant!”

“Shut up, Cant,” Arado says, pushing their helmet up to their forehead to deliver a pointed look. 

Cant stops, resorting to pointing and nodding instead. True to Arado’s words, Cant is saying nothing. Daltos smirks. Arado coughs. “Look, it'd be bad if you went and kicked the bucket, alright? Who’d sign my paycheck?”

“We don't have paychecks, Scarface,” Daltos points out.

“You get the idea,” is Arado’s grouchy response.

“Same goes for you. Who else is going to do all my work around here for me?” Still grinning, Arado flips him the bird. Cant shoots Daltos an offended look.

Two weeks later, Arado and Cant are laid out on cots in Klemm’s temporary sickbay, the both of them curled up and delirious with fever. Cant is taking up two whole cots, given that their height and mangled arm not allowing them to fit into just one cot.

They're not the only two struck with signs of sickness; thirty more bandits are quartered as well in the sickbay, pieces of tarp serving as partitions between cots where possible. Even more are gradually succumbing to whatever mysterious illness is taking root in the frigate. They've already lost forty bandits to it, with more well on their way.

Arsenal’s having to empty out his remaining cargo bays, performing some astounding sleight of hand and feats of coordination to do so without having to shove everything dislocated outside. 

There's precious supplies included in some of the containers that Daltos would rather remain intact rather than be pillaged by some of their sneakier bandits (plus, nobody likes chasing up thieves, least of all Arsenal).

Daltos stares at Arado, letting his gaze swing over to Cant. He feels nothing, empty on the inside, his expression blank. 

For his second highest ranked lieutenant to fall sick at a time like this won’t cripple their operations too badly. If it’d just been Arado and Cant becoming incapacitated, that’s fine, he can just reshuffle his lieutenants around to cover their temporary absences but more bandits are being brought in. 

Whatever is making them sick isn’t just confined, it’s _spreading_.

“Klemm, what's wrong with them?” He asks. Klemm hovers by, scratching his head with a large hand.

He’s no certified doctor but he’s sure seen a lot of weird shit in his life, having planet hopped for the first thirty or so years of his life until a spot of trouble with the law landed him on Pandora. And yes, weird shit includes ‘playing medic when nobody else is up to or capable of the task’.

“I don't know but whatever it is, it's hitting us faster than a skag barfing up its meal,” Klemm reports. He sounds calm. The way he’s wringing his hands and throwing anxious glances every so often at Arado and Cant tells Daltos otherwise.

“Tell the rest of my lieutenants to stay away from the frigate, their units included and anybody who’s not sick to move camp to the other clearing. I don’t care if they bitch and moan about it.” Klemm strides out of the room to relay his orders via Fieseler and Bucker.

Cant utters a low sound of misery, their mask shoved up over their face so Klemm can slip them mouthfuls of water. One of Klemm’s bandits appears, leaning over Cant to do just that. Daltos turns to Arado, who is mumbling about something nonsensical, until the word ‘water’ crops up.

There’s an unopened bottle of water besides him. His gloves interfere with loosening the cap, so he strips them off to uncap it with his bare hands. Arado lashes out at him when he lays a hand on their shoulder to help them sit up.

“Calm the fuck down, Arado, it’s just-” Teeth sink in his palm. It takes less than a second for Daltos to register that Arado’s just _bit_ him. 

He drops the bottle, water spilling onto the floor as it rolls away. Furious, he slams an elbow into his lieutenant’s chest before they can bite down any harder. It’d been either that or go for their face (and Arado’s got enough going on there already). Arado falls back with a grunt but lunges at him again, just as livid as he is.

Two of Klemm’s bandits have noticed the commotion and are already yanking Arado back, tying them down with cord. Daltos steps back, wincing as he examines the wound. Arado’s bitten hard enough to draw blood, teeth marks curving around his hand just under his thumb. 

Klemm wanders back in, only to spot him, Arado being restrained and coming to a conclusion before Daltos can explain what’s just happened, his face turning as white as a sheet.

“Scarface decided he wasn’t thirsty,” Daltos sarcastically says, flexing his hand. Blood leaks out at the teeth marks. Klemm snatches up his hand, forcing him to flatten it out so he can examine it. He yanks him over to a corner, out of earshot.

“We need to put you in quarantine, _now_ ,” Klemm explains in an undertone, hissing the last word.

“What? Why, it’s just a bite-” Daltos isn't even angry at Arado anymore, just caught off guard since the equally sarcastic, overly cautious, rational bandit he'd assigned to the post of second-in-command would _never_ behave like that.

“I’ve talked to Bucker and a couple of the other lieutenants. Whatever it is, it’s spreading through bites, wounds and cannibalism.” Oh. Well. Shit. “I’ve put all the Nomads under Fieseler and Gotha on current duties since nothing can get through their thick clothes and posted guards around the Rat camps. Other than that, everybody’s been ordered to stay clear.”

Daltos digests the information with some degree of pride in that Klemm’s been busy in the time since he’d stepped away. What he’s not pleased about is the fact that he might potentially be infected himself; there goes another meeting with Sjin. Since Arado’s also out of the picture, that leaves only one lieutenant in charge: Arsenal, and Arsenal is only one person.

There’s no way he can leave the running of the frigate to him. Technically, there’s the other lieutenants floating around to help but they don’t know jack shit about how things are done around here, given that they’re constantly flitting between territories and home base.

“Can I see Arsenal before I go and lock myself in my room again?”

“No, I’ll tell Arsenal to ECHO you,” Klemm says, digistructing bandages and cotton wool. 

It stings like a bitch when Klemm scrubs at the bite marks. Those aren’t going to disappear with how hard he’s scrubbing but Daltos doesn't blame him for trying. 

He even tries to bandage the wounds up for him but Daltos just snatches them away to do it himself. Klemm follows him all the way upstairs, just to be safe. The last Daltos sees of him (with a stoic expression) for the time being is prior to the door closing between them. 

Now alone, Daltos sinks onto his bed. Quarantine _again_. He’s starting to hate isolation more than dealing with his lieutenants interrupting him during meetings. The good news is that Arsenal ECHOs him about fifteen minutes later.

“So, I heard you went and got yourself into trouble again,” Arsenal begins in a chastising tone.

“I was just trying to help Arado drink but he got offended I didn’t put a curly straw in for him-” Daltos casually says.

“Let’s be serious here, just for thirty seconds. Which, by the way, I know you’re fully capable of.” Daltos makes a scoffing sound but allows him to continue (Arsenal dropping the lecturing tone for a serious one). “I know what this is, but I haven’t seen it get bad to this extent in years. I didn’t think it existed on Pandora in the first place.”

“What is it?” Arsenal rattles off the name of something scientific, plus some other stuff that is gibberish to Daltos. “Please fucking explain it in layman’s terms, Mister Know-It-All.”

“Rabies. Plain and simple.”

He digs around in his memory, dredging up an ancient one that feels as if it belongs to a different lifetime of his. “Didn’t they vaccinate us for that? I remember it being on the list or something to do with mandatory shots.”

“Yeah, but I don’t even know if it covers this kind.”

“What you’re really saying is, I’m fucked?”

“Maybe. Maybe not.” There’s a sound like Arsenal is tapping a pen against a surface in thought. When he speaks, he sounds determined. “Listen, if you come out of quarantine in about two days without looking like one of the bandits curled up in the sick bay, I think we can deem you ‘safe’.”

“What about yourself?” It doesn't sound like Arsenal is in the cargo bay but sequestered somewhere quiet, like his own room. That does not have pretty implications.

“Just got scratched when intervening between two morons, so we’re in the same boat.”

“Who’s running the show, then?”

“I’ve got a bunch of decent folks lined up to carry out your current orders. Klemm should be fine, so long as he gears up right and borrows Fieseler’s gloves and coat.” Thank fuck that Arsenal’s on the ball. That leaves his own personal orders to carry out.

“Great. What am I supposed to do-”

Arsenal sharply says, “You just stay in your room and try not to die.”

“Thanks for the moral support,” He dryly responds with.

“You’re welcome.” Arsenal says, mirroring his tone. “Try to report in every few hours so I know not to send people up to pick your room and corpse clean.”

“ _Fuck off_ , I should be saying that, not _you_.”

“See you soon, Daltos.” Arsenal doesn’t have to add ‘hopefully’ to the end of that before he exits the call, leaving Daltos well and truly alone to face the dilemma of ‘how to survive being potentially infected with a fatal disease’.

He might as well let Sjin know he’s not coming in for a meeting and tell him the truth about it.

Sjin answers his ECHO call in five seconds, sounding puzzled. “Daltos? It's not like you to call so early and ahead of time.”

“I got a situation here. It ain't pretty but I might die.” Daltos sees little point in mincing words.

There is precisely three seconds of silence before Sjin bursts out with, “What’s going _on_? You can't die-”

“A bunch of my bandits came down with rabies and one of them bit me. I've already been vaccinated but one of my lieutenants says it might not hold.” His own calmness surprises him.

“So you're just going to wait and see if it _kills_ you?” Sjin sounds upset, his voice breaking on the word ‘kill’. Daltos doesn't know what to make of it so he doesn't draw attention to it.

“There's no way to get treatment-”

“What about all those meds I sent you-”

“Not worth wasting them on me. They're better off saving them for those who really need them.”

“You're-” _Being stupid_ , is what Sjin wants to say. The horrible part is that Daltos sounds so pragmatic about it, resigned to his eventual fate and he has no idea how much it's hurting Sjin to hear him sound and act as much. Instead, he softly says, “Tell your bandits to not shoot the Loaders when they arrive.” 

The call ends a second after that cryptic sounding sentence is spoken.

Daltos protests, wanting to know what he's thinking; what’s the point in sending machines over when what they really need is-know what, _just fuck it_. He drops his ECHO device onto his bed after warning Arsenal of the incoming machines. 

Maybe they can help move stuff around or something. 

Other than that, there isn't a lot he can do to pass the time. Sleeping is out of the question; he's too wound up to even consider putting his head down and nap, let alone try.

Read? All the interesting books are kept in the engine room, far out of his reach. Plan his next move? He doesn't even know if he'll live long enough to see it get carried out. Record a log? No. He’s not in the mood for it. 

At the very least, maybe he can sort out his inventory and dictate who gets what. Arsenal is getting his SMG, and just because he's feeling generous, his room as well. Everything else is up for grabs.

Daltos empties out his inventory onto his bed. Guns, rations, smokes, lighter, bottles of water, toolkit, scraps of fabric and a couple of dead shields tumble out of the first digistruct module. His second inventory contains less run of the mill items.

A matchbox with the two silver bars (caked over with dry blood) he’d ripped out of his own head long ago. He remembers it like it'd happened yesterday, though. Dogtags, with his Dahl serial number and rank imprinted on it.

Logbooks, the contents of which he knows off by heart, dating back to when the frigate had been functional. He doesn't dare leave them just sitting around for anybody to leaf through.

Bits of folded up yellowing paper carefully folded over are unearthed. He has to unfold each of them to find out what they contain. Well, there's his degree in mechanical engineering. Next is his medical record, plus a notice of transfer to this frigate from another (formally dressed up as a promotion but he secretly thinks that his superiors had just been glad to get rid of him at the first opportunity). 

A series of photographs, taken back when things weren't so shit. The entire frigate crew is standing to attention. There’s Hawker and Hurricane, back when they were wardens, off to the side (both sporting identical smug smirks). He picks out a grinning Arsenal and a stoic Bucker standing amongst the bridge crew in the second row. 

The Captains are all at the very front, as usual. He almost doesn't recognise himself, looking straight at the camera with a smile. A genuine, honest to whatever deity smile, not a smirk, an actual _smile_.

Why is he so...happy in these shots? The photos aren't his, he found them when he'd been going through someone’s things in search of the frigate's technical manuals. He’s never been one to keep photos as any sort of keepsake. He must have forgotten he'd even picked them up in the first place, probably feeling much more sentimental back then.

Anyway, it might be because he is standing next to the person who'd started all this. They'd looked at him once with nothing but joy (there’s a better word that starts with ‘L’, ends with ‘e’ and rhymes with ‘dove’, and also happens to be a concept he struggles to wrap his head around). 

Take that joy, now turn it inside out. Imagine fashioning a dagger (doesn't matter what form it'll have in the end, so long as it cuts) out of it. Beat the blade, temper it, so that both edges are sharp enough to slice even a strand of hair falling onto it. For the final touch, warp the metal with heat while imagining the worst feeling in the universe: betrayal.

He’d stabbed them with it before they'd taken it from him and returned the favor. With that, their relationship is so broken that if they ever meet again, he’ll beat them within an inch of their life or straight up murder them in cold blood. 

The feeling’s mutual. He is surprisingly okay with that (because if he isn't, how else does he live with everything that's ever happened).

Fucking hell, he hasn't even gotten the chance to tell them what a traitorous, backstabbing, idiotic prick (plus a number of other expletives) they were. If it weren't for them fucking up so horribly, they wouldn't even be stuck here in the first place. 

He doesn't have a marker or anything on him to deface the photograph with. Maybe Arsenal would like the photograph as well (probably without graffiti, seeing as he defaced his long ago).

The rest of the photographs are along the same lines. He puts aside the group photo. The rest can stay with with him, placed into a lockbox that he's marked ‘to be burned with him’ if he dies. Arsenal wasn't bit, just scratched so he has a better chance of surviving to respect his wishes.

Hours pass, half a day crawling by. Daltos tidies up his room, eats and drinks, washes out the bite with warm water and soap (cursing his own stupidity the entire time), bandages it back up, reads the logbooks for the millionth time, tries to sleep and fails miserably. 

His stuff is still strewn out over half of his bed so he sits up to deal with that. He's only just shoving everything back into his inventory when Hawker ECHOs him in a right panic. 

Go figures that Hawker would ignore Arsenal’s heads-up about the Loaders.

“Hey, Daltos? There's some robots headed this way, carrying a whole bunch of stuff, what do you want us to do-”

“Let them pass,” He orders, once he's gotten over his shock in about two seconds flat.

“You sure?” Hawker sounds uneasy about letting them pass, with good reason. Loaders aren't particularly well-liked amongst bandits considering both sides are inclined to shoot the other on sight.

“I'm sure. They belong to my business partner.”

“Alright, I'll let the others know.” A doubtful Hawker ducks out of the call.

Arsenal calls him fifteen minutes later. Daltos can't make out what he's saying at first, since he sounds far too excited, his words spilling out in a rush. 

“Slow down and tell me what Sjin sent-”

“He sent vaccines! Lots of them! In little plastic thingies! Do you have any idea what this _means_?” Arsenal is practically shouting at him through the ECHO device. “I’ve sent Klemm up with one for you, so open your door once he gets there-”

Someone is knocking on his door. Arsenal continues to chatter to him nonstop, even as he gestures Klemm in. The call is put on hold.

Klemm insists on giving him a brief check-up. Daltos knows better than to resist, just letting him go through the motions. It's been hours since he got bit but he's not feeling out of the ordinary, save for a brief twinge of pain occurring whenever he jars his injured hand.

His state earns a baffled look from Klemm. Klemm pauses when checking his head for a fever.

“Weird, you ain't sick or anything,” He mumbles in amazement.

That's something, given that Arado had to be moved to the sick bay about an hour after they’d remarked ‘I ain't feeling so hot right now’. Cant had followed suit about two hours later (being unnaturally subdued to even make Daltos suspicious). 

“You going to hand over the vaccine?” Daltos asks, impatiently. Klemm drops it into his waiting hand.

Daltos flips the tiny packet over, skimming over the instructions. Klemm can't read certain fonts (something about being near illiterate or dyslexic), so he dictates it to him while translating it into bandit.

“Open the packet _carefully_ , apply patch inside so that the white side is facing up and leave on arm for about ten minutes,” Daltos instructs.

Klemm nods. “Anything else?”

“Don't let it get wet, put it anywhere stupid, yank it off too early, or accidentally scratch the red side where the needles are.” Daltos has reached the end of the instructions, so he lets a pause say as much for him. “Did you get all that?”

“Yeah, sounds pretty straightforward. Even the Goliaths can't get it wrong.” Klemm proceeds to mutter under his breath, “Might be better if the bandits who have more than two fingers and still have thumbs apply it for them.”

Daltos refuses to let Klemm apply the patch for him, following the instructions to let it sit on his upper arm. He has no idea if it'll work. All he can do is order Klemm and Arsenal to distribute as much of the vaccines (or whatever they're called) and see what comes of it.

Klemm departs his room with a spring in his step (if a hulking mass of muscle nearing two metres in height can skip, well, Daltos has now seen everything but skags fly). Daltos settles on his bed, his bandaged hand aching from the effort of putting the patch on. He hasn't dared put his gloves back on, not since the bite.

Truth be told, he’s less than thrilled about the unprompted help Sjin’s just sent. There is a line he has yet to cross with him but where does it lie and what does he have to do to step over it? 

_Nobody_ is this generous without an ulterior motive, no matter how benevolent Sjin tries to come off as. 

The price of the deal had been one hundred bandits for anything Daltos could ever ask for. It still sounds too good, even after months of knowing each other. Since he’s got one foot in the grave, he might as well put both feet in and hopes he lives.

The fact that he might live thanks to Sjin bothers him-nah, he's just being irrational. He reaches for his ECHO device to try to record an audio log to declutter his head of the thoughts that are piling up into a mess.

\--

In his defence, Sjin had skipped both morning tea, lunch and afternoon tea in favor of work. So, really, when his stomach grumbles in the middle of the meeting with Daltos, the only thing he can do is try to pretend that hadn't just happened.

Except Daltos had casually asked, “Are you hungry?”

If Sjin says ‘no’ (and his stomach had rumbled again), he's just going to look ridiculous if he excused himself later, in the middle of a meeting, nonetheless. That's unacceptable. If he says ‘yes’, Daltos is likely to be more lenient in judging him for wanting some food right now.

“Yes, I actually am,” Sjin concedes. 

“Nothing wrong with being hungry,” Daltos says, catching him by surprise. “If you got to eat, you got to eat.”

“I'll have Sherlock bring something up for the both of us?” Sjin offers. Daltos shrugs. 

Actually, Sjin’s never seen him eat, only drink. It makes him wonder if he's got a delicate stomach or he just doesn't like eating in front of people? Can he cook? Does he eat a lot?

Sherlock doesn't answer. It’s then that Sjin remembers that it's his early day off. Sherlock's long since gone home. Bah, he’s feeling merciful today, so he leaves him be to enjoy his tabletop games.

“Well, that's embarrassing,” Sjin mumbles.

“What's wrong?”

“Sherlock's not here. He went home an hour ago.”

“Oh, so your lackey ain't around to bring you food.”

A fantastic idea strikes Sjin, which is when if they're both feeling up to it, end up walking alongside the river to his penthouse. The first time he’d opened up the front door and let Daltos in, he'd been worried all the fine and tasteful decor would put him off.

Sips’ taste in furniture and trophies could be eclectic at best and gaudy at worst. The penthouse is kept clean thanks to tiny, discrete robotic cleaners hiding in the walls that only emerged when nobody’s around. 

Still, Sjin can't help being anxious as Daltos looks around and is quiet for the first thirty seconds within stepping into the front hallway.

“You might actually have some taste after all,” Daltos eventually compliments him.

Sjin blinks before the words truly sink in. He‘s grinning before he can help it. 

“Why thank you, I had a professional designer in to help,” He says. It pains him to say that but if Daltos finds anything tacky, he can use that as an excuse.

Sjin takes him on a whirlwind tour of the penthouse, watching Daltos crane his head his way and that to take in the grand splendor with evident curiosity.

A diamond cat trots over to them from one of the guest rooms, her gem studded tail waving in greeting. She dodges Sjin’s outstretched hand and winds around Daltos’ legs. 

“I didn't know you kept a cat,” Daltos says, watching her with surprise that’s plain on his face.

“You're not allergic to cats, are you?” Sjin hastily checks, picking up the cat. She meows, letting herself be picked up without a fuss. 

He runs a comforting hand over her bumpy coat, the air conditioner having left her cool to the touch. She starts to purr, the sound oddly pitched and metallic, akin to fingers running along metal windchimes. 

“No,” Daltos replies.

“This is Elsa,” Sjin cheerfully introduces, a hand moving to her blue leather collar, where a circular tag stamped with ‘ELSA’ is dangling off a gold ring there. “Elsa, this is Daltos.”

She coolly regards his guest with steady, light blue eyes that blink on occasion. Growing tired of being held, she starts to squirm in his arms. 

Sjin puts Elsa down. She wanders over to the couch and claims it as her own with a single leap. Judging by the way she stares straight at him, she's challenging him over whether or not she's allowed on Sips’ favourite couch.

“Is she spoiled?” Daltos asks him. “She takes after someone.”

“She's not mine, if that's what you're implying!” Sjin says, a tad hotly. Daltos just smirks. “I'm just looking after her for now.” That's another lie; he remembers buying her as a tiny kitten after pleading Sips to let him have one until he’d relented. He continues more calmly, “Anyway, I'm going to order some food. Do you want anything?”

“You know what, I haven't had pizza in a long time. You got that here?”

“What kind would you like?” Pizza doesn't sound half bad. Sjin conveniently leaves out the fact that he doesn't cook as much as he should, preferring to order it in most of the time. 

“Whatever sounds good, I'm not picky,” Daltos says, moving to sit next to Elsa and reaching over to pet her. “If you put any fancy stuff on it though, I'm feeding it to your cat.”

Well, that takes the fun out of ordering for him. Elsa bats at his hand, latching onto it with both paws to try to gnaw at the material. He winces, switching his hand.

“She actually bites really hard, so be careful,” Sjin warns him before he can find out the hard way.

“You call that a bite? My lieutenant bites harder than you…” Daltos isn't paying attention. Sjin isn’t going to ask about the last part, walking into the kitchen. 

The fridge is one of those models with a touchscreen embedded into it. He types out his order (two ham and pineapple pizzas plus a soufflé), having ordered enough times for the system to know his taste preferences off by heart. Daltos isn't picky as he’d said so he can see what Sjin’s palate is like.

All Sjin has to do is wait once the order goes through. A minute later, the fridge’s side compartment flips open, presenting his order to him fresh from the confines of the specialised food digistruct system (also featuring biodegradable, microwaveable and dishwasher friendly containers that the food comes in).

He collects forks, knives, napkins and plates from the cupboards before taking everything out into the living room. Daltos is still entertaining Elsa, looking up once Sjin places everything onto the glass coffee table in front of him.

“That was fast,” Daltos absently observes. Elsa meows, demanding more attention. He scratches at her head, satisfying her. 

Sjin smiles enigmatically in response, sitting on his right. “Plate?” 

Daltos shakes his head and peels off both his gloves. Elsa tries to steal one of them, only for him to despawn both. He picks up a slice of pizza with his _bare hands_ (one of which is sporting a healing bite mark).

He is just as bad as Sips-Sjin makes an effort to focus on eating his soufflé, sneaking sideway glances at Daltos. Daltos fails to bat away Elsa when she investigates what he's eating by climbing onto his lap and sticking her nose right into the slice. 

“Don't be gross,” Daltos says to her once he's swallowed. She ignores him to sniff at it. 

Sjin is too busy chewing to tell him to ignore her, she has a full bowl of food in the kitchen; Daltos tears off the bit she’d sniffed and feeds it to her. In front of him. Casually, not caring that diamond cats required a strictly regulated diet of minerals and distilled water.

The sheer nerve (remembering Sips feeding Elsa scraps while grinning at him the entire time) leaves Sjin flabbergasted.

Elsa utters a content purr once she devours the tidbit, looking up expectantly at Daltos for more. 

He smiles.

Sjin has to concentrate on lifting his fork straight to his mouth so he doesn't let it meet his cheek instead. 

“So, you like cats?” He ventures. Fuck it, he'll just let him keep feeding her, if it means he gets to see him keep smiling.

“They’re not skags or anything else on this planet so I’m fine with that.” Elsa munches away.

“I'll take that as a ‘yes’.” Sjin reaches for his own pizza, still watching him alternate between feeding himself and the cat.

Once she's had roughly two whole slices, Daltos tells her, “That's enough you moocher, the rest of the pizza is mine.”

She flicks her tail but gets the hint when he doesn't offer her anymore, leaping off the couch to regally saunter off in search of water, tail held high.

Sjin is glad she's gone; she's heavy enough as it is without somebody else feeding her inappropriate (and fatty) food. On the other hand, Daltos is no longer smiling, his expression having settled into a content one.

Shame. Sjin transfers two slices of pizza onto his plate, cutting them up with a knife before picking up his fork. 

“You don't eat pizza with your hands?” Daltos has noticed and is watching him with raised eyebrows. 

“I don't like getting my hands dirty!” Sjin primly exclaims. He's still aghast at how casually Daltos and Sips can tolerate touching all that grease, sauce and _urgh_ , it makes Sjin’s skin crawl at the thought of all that mess sticking to his fingers.

“I'm not judging you,” Daltos evenly says, with a pointed look that tells Sjin that he’s judging him anyway.

Sjin rolls his eyes and returns to the pizza. Soft, pillowy dough rolled out with a generous helping of diced pineapple, an avant garde tomato sauce with a hint of herbs mixed in, real mozzarella cheese melted just right and actual ham. The pizza crust itself has a crunch to it, almost pastry-thin and flaking off at the edges. 

He’s not having any of the foul tasting substance called ‘skag meat’ anywhere near his kitchen, not when there's better but costly alternatives available. It's well worth the price.

“How's the pizza?” Sjin asks Daltos. 

Daltos is already on his fifth slice. There's none of the cautious reservation he'd displayed at their very first meeting. At least he's eating, rather than picking at his food. 

“It's good,” Daltos says. Sjin inwardly sighs. Getting him to be more specific is still a work in progress.

They sit in comfortable silence occasionally broken by Sjin asking whatever questions pop into his mind. He himself hails from laidback Aristaeus while Daltos is from Dahl controlled Hera. His accent had tipped Sjin off but it's nice hearing confirmation.

“Can you speak Pandoran?” Sjin inquires. He knows a smattering of phrases and words picked up from here and there but the language itself eludes him.

“Yeah, I can.” Sjin nudges the box of tissues on the coffee table towards Daltos. 

Daltos eyes it, then Sjin, proceeding to lick his fingers clean-okay, now he's just uprooting basic etiquette on _purpose_.

Sjin purses his lips, resisting the urge to yell at him in exasperation, ‘There are tissues right in front of you!’. 

“Say something for me,” He says instead. Daltos indulges him. “What did you say?”

A smug grin meets him when he looks over. “If you don't surrender, I’ll shoot you in the knees with a shotgun.” Daltos adds, “Also, I've been told my accent is fucking atrocious.”

“I could hardly tell,” Sjin earnestly says, impressed (but not surprised; Pandoran itself is a touch barbaric and crude, to his own ears).

The rest of the first evening up at his penthouse proceeds at a leisurely pace. Sjin thinks he's made great strides in getting to know his business partner. 

Sherlock might not be happy about Sjin willingly associating with him. He’d dropped countless hints about the bandit possibly ‘cutting him loose and running without delivering’, but so far, Daltos has stuck to his end of the bargain without showing any inclinations to do what Sherlock fears.

That's one of the reasons why Sjin had chosen him out of the other candidates he'd researched. Well, that and some other less noble reasons. He’d asked if Sherlock would prefer another, less reasonable bandit instead.

Sherlock had paled, clutching at his paperwork in horror. “There are worse bandits than him out _there_?” Clearly he thinks all bandits can be lumped into the category of bloodthirsty, vicious, lawless and murderous savages. 

See, when it comes down to it, Daltos isn't that bad compared to the rest of his kind (even if dealing with him in person drives Sjin mad sometimes). Otherwise, he's just as much of a person as the both of them are.

Sherlock still tries his damned hardest to avoid interacting with ‘the bandit’ as much as possible whenever Daltos shows up, though. Sjin sighs, not pushing the subject. Sherlock is too valuable to let go because of that one flaw of his, so he lets it slide.

On that note, dinner has become a regular occurrence at Sjin’s penthouse. Elsa tends to seek out Daltos the moment she hears the front door creak open, meandering over to see if it's really him.

Sjin doesn't mind she likes him better but one of these days, he'll have to tell him to stop sneaking scraps under the table to her.

Sips had said ‘it's because she doesn't look well fed, so I'm helping her achieve her lifelong dream of becoming a big girl’. 

Daltos probably does it to annoy him.

Elsa probably just likes the two because they kept feeding her strange and wonderful foodstuffs. That's probably not good for her but diamond cats are hardier than they look, both inside and out. 

“You set up candles this time.” Daltos glances over the table laden with candles in Sjin’s dining room. 

There's food laid out on plates too; they tended to err on the simple side of things when it came to eating but Sjin had felt like being fancy, also dressing up. 

Too bad it's likely that Daltos doesn't have anything like a suit. Sjin doesn't doubt that he'd decline if he offered to lend him one. 

“What? Candles are _nice_. I didn’t think you’d actually notice,” Sjin retorts. Today, Elsa is with Sherlock so she can't interrupt. Sjin feels a little guilty for depriving her of her usual source of table scraps but he’ll make it up to her later with a rare cat treat (catnip, obviously).

“What kind of idiot do you take me for?” Daltos shoots him a pointed look that Sjin bites the inside of his cheek to avoid responding to. 

“What else can you notice?” He says, in a coy tone that makes it obvious that Daltos has to answer specifically, rather than vaguely. Daltos tilts his head, his bored gaze running over Sjin.

“You're wearing a suit and a tie this time,” He observes thirty seconds later. 

“Yes, but that’s not it. Try again.” Sjin smiles at him while pouring himself a glass of wine from the chilled bottle (something fruity and white, to go with the seafood).

“In my experience, guessing games usually end pretty badly. And it’s not because I’m shit at them.” Daltos folds his arms over his chest, deadeyeing him. “They make me mad. And I tend to shoot things when I get mad.”

“Well, I’m not telling you the answer and you can’t shoot the dinner table,” Sjin informs him.

“If you’d been one of my bandits, I’d have shot you in the head by now for wasting my time.” There's no heat to his words despite the threat. By now, Sjin's come to associate it with how he shows affection, albeit in an offhand, violent way. 

“Ah, but I’m not.” Sjin puts aside his emptied glass of wine. “So what am I to you then?”

“Hard to say. You’re either a nuisance or an asset. Maybe both.” Well, at least he's honest about it.

“Has anyone ever told you that you have a great sense of humor?”

Daltos smirks, saying dryly, “I’ve been told it’s perfect for Pandora.”

“Here, have some wine.” Sjin leans across the table to pour some into Daltos’ glass.

“Don’t want to risk the rakk ale this time, I see.” Sjin hasn't brought out any rakk ale, which is rather unusual.

“Rakk ale has its place,” Sjin says in a gentle but firm tone. 

“Don’t insult rakk ale when it’s all I can get on this hellhole.” Still, Daltos picks up the glass to take a sip of it, frowning after. “Also, wine tastes just as awful just as I remember it.”

“Well, when was the last time you had wine? It must have been pretty shit wine, too.” Sjin's own brews withstanding, any wine he tastes in comparison is literally the water of life.

“All wine tastes bad to me. The last time I had the stuff was about…” Here, Daltos falls quiet as he consults his memory where time hasn't nibbled away at it to the point of completely eroding what he's trying to remember. “A little more than a Pandoran year ago.” Something subtle has crept into his voice which wasn't there a few seconds ago.

“Was it for anything special?” Sjin asks, deciding not to draw attention to it (since he's repaid the favor a few times).

“You’re asking a lot of questions today.”

“You don’t have to answer them if you don’t want to.” Sjin helps himself to more mashed potatoes, handing the bowl to Daltos, who spoons out the rest onto his own plate. “I’m just curious.” The empty bowl is set down amongst others.

“It’s like a birthday, except for when two people have been together a long time, like a year. What do you call that?” Daltos is taking care to keep his face neutral, even though Sjin can see that he's trying hard not to sound or look incredibly bitter. 

“An...anniversary?” Sjin pretends to gasp, complete with a hand to his mouth and wide eyes. “Oh my, were you married?”

“Ice.”

“I beg your pardon…?” Sjin starts, offended.

“You’re way off the mark. By an entire star system or so,” Daltos explains. 

“You’ve never married, but is there someone?” Sjin has a fairly good idea of why he's relieved he was mistaken but he's not going to dwell on that here and now. 

“Lukewarm.” 

“Okay, there ‘was’ someone then, I’m guessing.”

“Boiling hot.”

“They’re not dead, are they?” That would be one hell of a way to make this dinner extremely awkward. Good job, Sjin, for ruining what was supposed to be a nice, relaxing evening.

“Might as well be,” Daltos concedes after a lull where Sjin thinks he's not going to answer. 

“I’m so sorry,” He says, letting the sincere apology that's been on the tip of his tongue escape. “You have my condolences.”

“It was years ago, so it’s no big deal.” Daltos shrugs, one shoulder rolling to form a half circle rather than a full one.

“I’m also sorry in that I didn’t mean to pry.” Sjin puts down his fork and knife to shoot him a reproachful look.

“Apology accepted, though you didn't need go that far.” Daltos fixes Sjin with an expectant look. “What about you, then?”

“Same situation,” Sjin says. Daltos files that bit away like he does with all the stuff he's come to learn about him. 

Grinning sardonically, Daltos lifts his glass. “Here’s a toast to failed relationships but great sex.” 

“You can’t toast the latter!” Sjin splutters a second after he's raised his own glass.

“Why not?” Daltos’ grin doesn't budge, though he finishes off his glass of wine. He is definitely glad he's not that drunk as to forget Sjin’s outraged expression.

“It’s-” _Inappropriate_ , that's what.

Daltos starts to laugh. “You’ve never gotten any. That’s why _you_ can’t toast,” He notes.

“Fuck you, I so _have_!” Sjin snaps, wanting to bury his face in his hands. He can't maintain his outraged expression because he's gone as red as a boiled lobster.

“Pass. Plus, that’s exactly the kind of thing a virgin would say.” Daltos is still snickering, eating the last of the potatoes on his plate. He’s relishing Sjin’s embarrassment, more than he probably should be.

“Stop laughing!” Sjin resettles in his chair to sulk. “You are the most vulgar person I’ve ever met, next to my boss,” He mutters, just loud enough for Daltos to hear.

“Thanks, it comes with the territory, and your boss deserves a high-five.” Daltos doesn't even take it as an insult, seeming proud. 

“Disgusting…”

He puts down his fork and knife, looking directly at Sjin without a trace of humour. “By the way, I think I guessed what I was supposed to notice.”

“My, my, do share.” Sjin stops sulking to lean forward, eager to hear what he has to say. “I’d love to hear what you’ve finally guessed.”

“You’re a fancy tryhard,” Daltos remarks like he’s announcing a life changing discovery, his grin having returned.

Sjin sits in shock for three seconds before he shouts at him from across the table, “What do you _mean_ , a fancy _tryhard_?” His aggravated voice echoes in the expanse of the room.

“You’re a fancy, filthy stinking rich businessman, Sjin.” Daltos casts a pointed gaze around the room before letting it land on Sjin. “I get it. You can stop trying so hard to show me that you’re one.”

“...And how did you come to that conclusion?” Sjin asks, his anger having wilted with his hopes having been crushed so thoroughly. He reaches over to refill his glass of wine, needing something to quell the rising tide of disappointment within him. 

It's either get himself hammered or do something rash that he'll really regret later.

“It’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for the set-ups at our meetings.” The worst part is that Daltos had sounded so _sure_ of himself when he'd guessed. “What, did I guess wrong again?”

Seeing that Sjin's fallen quiet, he frowns. It's not the first time Sjin’s done this, randomly lapsing into his thoughts with a split second of melancholiness showing on his face. 

Sometimes it's like he's forcing himself to carry on with their conversations rather than simply telling him what's wrong so he can give him the space he needs, if the thoughts are that bad (he knows exactly what's it like).

Sjin's never brought it up so Daltos refrains from doing so, out of respect.

“Yeah, you did.” He sounds calm. The way he's not looking straight at him gives Daltos pause. He's not going to apologise; Sjin had asked him to guess and he had. If Sjin has issues with his answer, then that's his own problem to sort out.

“I told you I was shit at guessing games.” He’d made that clear at the very start. “I thought I had it for sure this time.” He can’t think of anything else that might be right and Sjin hasn't given any other hints either. 

It looks like neither of them are in the mood to continue, even if Sjin started the game in the first place.

“I think we should call it a ‘night’.” Sjin lifts his head. “I’ll send over more medical supplies and disinfection gear tomorrow.”

“Thanks, plague isn’t a laughing matter.” Daltos pushes away from the table, standing up. 

He’ll have to ask Arsenal to help disinfect all the cargo bays and enlist whoever else is immune as soon as possible. They need the space back before the rain sets in and ruins whatever had to be dumped outside to make room to fit all the sick indoors.

“Wouldn’t want all my potential mine workers to drop dead, would we?”

“One more thing.” Daltos turns in the doorway.

“Yes?” Sjin raises an eyebrow. 

“There’s no shame in being a virgin. I’m sure you’d be somebody’s type if you stopped tryharding so much.” With that, Daltos sets off down the hallway, showing himself out. 

Sjin massages his forehead. Well, that'd failed, but for entirely different reasons than the ones he'd envisioned.

\--

In the morning, Sjin leaves the penthouse for work, usually with Sips. People are usually astonished to learn that he is not accustomed to waking up so early; it takes him a little over half an hour to stop playing the ‘you snooze, you lose’ game with his alarm.

Sometimes, Elsa likes to join in by helpfully sitting on his chest if he isn't sitting up by then (one more reason Sjin doesn't like people feeding her random things; sitting on his chest makes it feel like he's suffocating).

He gets up early for three things: his morning grooming routine, to feed Elsa before she can whine, and Sips’ cooking.

Sips is the opposite. He wakes up as late as possible (though Sjin knows that he has the ability to get out of bed earlier than anyone he's ever known). He spends less than ten minutes in the bathroom only to emerge from it as fresh as a daisy, ready for the day even if he was close to pulling an all-nighter yesterday. 

Some people just have all the _luck_. 

That said, Sips’ cooking style leaves something to be desired. His omelettes come out looking half-burned, half-cooked, mottled pieces of egg that have been through a blender set at maximum speed. 

Sjin was at first, apprehensive (back when they moved into their first home together) about eating any of it. At some point, he realises he shouldn't be eating so much takeout and resigns himself one morning, to try Sips’ weird-looking omelette...thing. 

He tells himself he's doing his body a favor to eat something that's not frozen, instant microwave or laden with so much fat, salt and oil for once.

It pleases Sips when he’d asked to try one; he's never worn such a wide grin before, humming as he goes about making the damned thing.

What is he _adding_? A spoonful of chicken broth powder, a pinch of salt, a handful of roughly chopped chives, following it all up with a generous teaspoon of _pepper_ ; Sjin tears his gaze away. The kitchen starts to smell of eggs.

At least Sips doesn't set the fire alarm off in the process (‘it had been just _one time_ ’, Sjin yells whenever Sips brings up his one and only cooking mishap).

The disaster of an omelette arrives on a chipped, cheerful looking plate with circular stripes on its edges. Sjin pokes at it with his fork; he starts when Sips dumps a bottle of soy sauce, his plate and a fork onto the table before joining him. 

He actually adds the soy sauce to the omelette. The eggs have the consistency of a sponge, greedily soaking up the sauce. Without batting an eyelid, Sips starts to eat it.

“Eat up while it's hot,” He says, giving Sjin an expectant look. “You can have some soy sauce too if you want.” Said bottle is nudged across the table to him. _No thanks_.

“I think I'm good.” Thus, Sjin cuts off a mouthful with a knife at where it looks the most edible, stabbing the tines of his fork in and expecting to feel resistance. His fork goes straight through, clinking against the plate. Promising already. Closing his eyes, he puts the tidbit in his mouth.

Sips lifts his head up to see Sjin digging into his omelette with newfound gusto. 

“You like it?” He drawls. “Omelettes aren't the only thing I can make, you know.” 

Sjin nods, seeing as his mouth is full. Either because he's hadn't had any proper, home-cooked meal for five days or Sips cooking is simply that delicious; it might be both. 

Sjin chooses to entrust him with the cooking from there on. Presentation isn't everything, after all.

The mug cakes? At a glance, they’re blackened, coal-shaped lumps in a cup.

However, Sjin’s spoon glides right through to the delicious, gooey centre. It tastes like a dream, everything if not, more, than what a mug cake should be despite Sips having thrown the basics into a cup, mixed it with a spoon and stuck it in the microwave. 

He's not going to get started on what happens when Sips makes _dinner_.

That hasn't changed in the years Sjin’s known him. Sips has only marginally improved in making his meals look edible. 

In the penthouse, Sjin always walks into the kitchen to find breakfast waiting for the two of them. Sips makes it while wearing a suit with an apron thrown on top. He doesn't care if anything splatters the suit. 

“I can always change out of it,” He says when Sjin had pointed it out.

Never mind that it takes him more effort to change out of it rather than just cooking in his sleepwear and changing into his suit later.

Well, the dry cleaners always seemed happy to see Sherlock bring in stained bits of clothing whenever Sips was too enthusiastic about cooking.

Today is different. When Sjin emerges from his room, there's no smell of butter or oil frying, no sounds of cupboards being slammed and opened, none of Sips’ humming, only horrible and bleak silence.

He walks around the penthouse, confused, calling out for Sips. At first he thinks it's a prank; Sips is more of a troll, though. Sjin can see any prank of his coming from a mile away.

Sjin yells out for Sips, his temper snapping, a matchstick being dragged along the side of its box, a single moment of fury giving the flame life. 

“This isn't funny!” His voice races down the corridors and sweeping into every room with an open door to frisk them. That dreadful silence answers him. 

He barges into Sips’ room. The bed is made, not a single fold along it, the blankets are folded up into symmetrical rectangles instead of left sliding halfway off the bed, pillows fluffed up and left to wait at the opposite end.

What few possessions Sips keeps are all accounted for on the shelves. They've been dusted recently. 

His wardrobe is intact at a glance; his suits are hanging on their hangers, the protective plastic crinkling when Sjin nudges them aside, hoping to find Sips crouched at the back with some ridiculous explanation ready as to why he's hiding there (the monsters in my closet invited me in for tea, aw, look, you scared them all off).

Nothing but air and dust bunnies are found in the back of the closet. He tries the bathroom next. The door had been left open. 

The shower floor is slick with water, a damp towel hanging off its rack. The mirror has long since cleared of condensation. Everything else is where it's supposed to be.

Elsa winds her way around his ankles. Sjin picks her up to hold her close, the lump in his throat growing.

Minutes earlier, Elsa had leapt up onto the kitchen table to find a scrap of paper sitting there. Finding it inedible, she'd batted it off the table. The page had fluttered to the floor, where it swept underneath the fridge when she strolls past to go find Sjin.

The writing on the paper says: 

GOING ON VACATION, TURNED MY ECHO DEVICE OFF. YOU AND SHERLOCK CAN HOLD THE FORT FOR ME. I’LL BE BACK WHENEVER.

SEE YOU LATER ALLIGATOR, xoxoxo SIPS.

\--

It’s rare that they have leftovers from the dinners. Sjin’s usually happy to let him take them back with him to the frigate in containers.

Daltos usually ends up eating them later, not wanting to waste the food by letting it go bad. Nobody ever dares to steal his food out of the fridge. They all know who it belongs to because he scrawls his name across the lid (or lids) in capital letters. Even the illiterate ones know not to touch them.

Not long after that first dinner, Daltos brings the leftover pizza back to the frigate. It’s still warm enough and there’s more than half of it left. He ends up sharing it with Arsenal. Arsenal seems unusually delighted with the offering. 

They’re currently eating in one of the cargo bays, seated on crates with an ammo box shoved in between them as a makeshift table.

Arsenal doesn’t even bother to hide the curiosity in his tone when he casually asks, “So, what did you get up to with Sjin, this time?” 

His fingers are sticky with melted cheese that he makes an unhappy face about, evidently tasting some residue of engine grease. He has a bottle of rakk ale he’s stolen from some unlucky bandit’s stash and is now chugging it.

There are many answers Daltos could give. He picks one and says it with a straight face after he’s chewed and swallowed, “I played with Sjin’s pussy.”

Arsenal spits out the rakk ale he'd been drinking. Thankfully, none had been directed at him. “You did _what_?” Coughing, Arsenal swings his head around to stare at him with wide eyes.

“You jealous?” Daltos raises an eyebrow, continuing to munch on a pizza slice.

“Yes, I am!” Arsenal bumps the table as he glares at him. “Wait a second, you don't _look_ that disheveled,” Arsenal says, scrutinising him with unusual intensity.

Will Daltos ever pass up the chance to fuck with Arsenal, considering Arsenal likes to fuck with him at every opportunity in turn? Never. “I never said I took my clothes off.”

“Oh my god, you're hideous.” Arsenal finishes wiping away at his mouth using the back of his hand. He throws a sour look at Daltos for having made him spit out some of his drink, what an enormous waste of decent rakk ale. Daltos can't help it, he starts to crack up. Arsenal leans across to try to shove him off the crate he’s sitting on. “You liar, I knew you couldn’t get lucky that easily on this fucking hellhole!”

“I'm not lying! I really did.” Daltos says, sounding earnest. “Here, Sjin sent me a photo.” He passes his ECHO device to Arsenal, who warily takes it.

“...It's a _cat_ , you slaglicking, fucking, son of a gun-” Arsenal's outrage echoes down the corridor, mingled with Daltos’ laughter. A couple of bandits working on a Monster look up, then back down, dismissing the sight of their lieutenant trying to punch their leader. 

Daltos dodges another swing from Arsenal, ducking out of the cargo bay. He leaves the rest of the pizza in the hopes that it’ll placate him. There’s no way Arsenal can run after him so he’s safe. He heads up to his room to catch some sleep, looking forward to it.

About three weeks later on a late night coffee run, Arsenal devises his revenge. It’s late enough that there’s nobody else around. Everybody who’s on night watch is outside at the moment. Anybody who is inside at this time is considered to be off-duty, injured, sick or trying to shirk showing up for their shift. Arsenal’s on the lookout for the last.

He could really use some coffee, so he's on his way to the kitchen, only to spot Daltos carrying several flat, wide boxes (coming from the opposite direction). Arsenal manages to duck into an empty doorway. The sudden motion jars his leg into sending out a spasm that lasts for two seconds before it fades. 

Arsenal waits. It’s no great secret that Daltos brings back food from his evenings with Sjin. The first time somebody had nicked the container? Arsenal doesn’t know how he’d found out who, but the culprit had ended up strung from the flagpole outside missing half their teeth with the sign ‘DO NOT STEAL MY FOOD’ hanging around their neck.

At least the culprit hadn’t ended up dead. They got to have shiny gold teeth installed as replacements, so that sort of makes up for being beaten almost to death for stealing somebody’s leftovers.

Anyway, Arsenal’s patience is rewarded when Daltos sticks his head out, scanning the corridor to see if the coast is clear before stepping out. He walks faster than he normally does, quickly heading off in the direction of his room (to probably sleep). Once he’s gone, Arsenal limps into the kitchen.

If there is one thing he knows about Daltos, it’s that he always takes the same place to store his food in one of the fridges. The one time Arsenal had tested it by stealing said spot to see if he’d notice? He had and had gotten incredibly salty about it.

What kind of best friend is he, if he doesn’t fuck with Daltos every once in awhile? Arsenal finds the fridge he’s looking for, opening it up. He finds the spot at the very back, lifting up one of the lids to see what Daltos is being so secretive about it. It can’t possibly be that-the fucker brought back even more _pizza_.

There is no way he can eat all of it. Arsenal comes to the conclusion that he’s either hoarding it for the next few days. If he’s hiding it, there is no way he’s going to share it with anybody else. Arsenal is still irritated about the cat ordeal. He closes the lid, resetting all the items in the fridge to hide all trace of his investigation before shutting the door.

While making his coffee, he starts to formulate his revenge. By the time he’s limped back to his station with his coffee (one of his bandits pulling out a chair for him, bless their cotton and probably holed socks), Arsenal knows what to do the next time Daltos runs a meeting.

In the morning, Arado passes through his cargo bay to verify their latest shipments. Arsenal walks over to them (as best as he can when his leg is about to cramp), handing them the clipboard before voicing his main concern.

“Hey, do we have a meeting today?” Arsenal may not be able to physically go to most meetings unless he’s high on painkillers but today he’s going to make a special effort. 

Arado gives him a searching albeit, thoughtful look. If there’s no meeting, then there goes his chance. He’ll have to wait until the next one to enact his plan. It might be too late then.

“Yeah, Daltos woke up about an hour ago. He wants to send some scouts out to the hinterlands along the west coast.” Arado shrugs. “Meeting’s in half an hour. I doubt it’ll be interesting enough to you, so maybe you should-”

“You know what? I’ll go to the meeting,” Arsenal brightly tells them. Arado closes their mouth, blinking at him. The two of them get along well enough that for him to willingly tag along to a meeting is out of the ordinary. Arado, Bucker or Daltos usually filled Arsenal in on what he’s missed to make up for his absence.

“You sure?” Arado finally asks. Having Arsenal during the meetings is preferred; Bachem and Donier tended to stop being so pig-headed, having experienced his wrath several times in the past for crossing him. “Your leg…”

“I’m _sure_ ,” Arsenal insists, grinning. “I got my prescription renewed by Klemm, so if my leg starts to play up, I can just pop my painkillers.”

“Fine, I’ll let him know you’re actually attending,” Arado muses out loud. “It might actually put him in a good enough mood to tolerate everybody being idiots for once.” They leave with the clipboard in hand, no doubt to pass the word onto Daltos.

One of Arsenal’s bandits draws close, having stood close by enough to overhear the conversation. “Hey, you need us to send up a chair or call Cant over to carry you up?” The last part is added in a joking tone. Arsenal flips the bird in response, earning a snicker.

Fifteen minutes later, Arsenal starts to make the trip up to the meeting room. Halfway there, his leg is beginning to rebel against the extra strain he’s putting it through. He grits his teeth and persists, even if he has to stop and lean against a wall to catch his breath. 

Bucker and Cant find him in said state, the two walking over to him. “You alright there? You could have just called Cant over-” Bucker begins.

“Cant,” Cant mutters, moving around him to peer into Arsenal’s pale face. Arsenal reaches up to push their masked face out of his own.

“I'll make it,” He grounds out, inwardly cursing that he sounds like he's about to pass out. Bucker is wearing a look of consternation. He signs to Cant to ‘stay’, with Cant signing back agreement when Arsenal looks down to glare at his leg.

To be fair, Klemm had offered to cut it off below the knee but Arsenal’s seen him perform amputations before. If he'd have let him, there'd have been nothing left of his entire leg starting from his thigh by the time he's done.

Half the calf muscle is missing already and that's from Klemm trying to _extract_ the bullet before Arsenal had pleaded him to ‘stop cutting me up and just leave the fucking thing in there, I'd rather just have a fucked up leg than no leg at all’.

It's not Klemm’s fault. On bad days, Arsenal imagines the bullet grinding against bone, pressing against muscle and tissue, burrowing even deeper with every step he takes.

The resulting pain alone is guaranteed to have him gasping for air, fingers digging into his leg. He wishes his nails are as sharp as a surgeon's scalpel as he grappled with the idea of tearing apart his own flesh, anything, _just make it stop hurting_. The painkillers are reserved for those days.

Arsenal makes sure there are no sharp objects or tools in his room, ever. 

The painkillers come from one of Klemm’s buddies out west who’s a basement pharmacist. Half the time, the painkillers are inedible, packaged so crudely that the heat of the sun destroys them or their mailman forgets to be careful and crushes them by accident. The painkillers might cause him to be loopy rather than focused. That's a risk he's always willing to take. His bandits know to step in if he seems out of it.

The alternative to painkillers is applying a potent oily mixture derived from the seeds, pulp and flesh of the firemelon plant to his leg. God, it _burns_ like somebody's set off the actual plant next to him but it takes the pain away so he can fall asleep or get on with what he’s doing. 

Out of all the methods recommended to him that he’s tested, unfortunately, those two only ever give him temporary relief. The pain always came back in the end.

Of course, Arsenal could always not push himself but he's always liked testing his own limits since they change every so often. If other people find fault with that, that's their own problem, not his.

Bucker and Cant accompany him to the bridge. The two could have walked on ahead and be there earlier but they're slowing their pace to match his. It's kind of nice. Bucker fills him in on where he thinks Daltos is sending them. 

Cant offers the occasional correction by crudely signing short, choppy sentences, fingers expertly flexing out the words. Bucker takes them as they come, which appears to please Cant. 

Hawker and Hurricane join them as the three draw close to the bridge. Hawker immediately offers Arsenal an arm to hold onto that he dismisses. Hurricane elbows their twin to get them to leave Arsenal alone. Hawker pouts but reluctantly lays off. 

Arsenal hasn't been to the bridge in ages. The layout hasn’t changed since he last passed through. Nothing looks like it’s malfunctioning. He guesses that Daltos might have rigged everything back up so that it’s all working.

The doors to the meeting room are open. Donier and Arado are inside already. The two are at opposite ends of the room, eyeing each other up with the restless air of two people itching for a fight.

It's not helped by Hawker bounding over to Donier to roughly sling an arm over his shoulders. 

“Who do you think will get picked to fly scouting duty?” They thrust their grinning face close to Donier’s tanned, scowling one. “Not _you_ , that's for sure,” They crow.

Donier slaps Hawker’s arm off him, stepping away. “Fuck you, I got as good a chance as you two this time,” He snaps. Hurricane moves to join Hawker in riling up Donier.

Arsenal moves to take the stool that's usually reserved for Short Stirling. They're not here today so he doesn't doubt they'll mind him borrowing it. His leg throbs when he sits down but relaxes once he's arranged it so that it’s at a comfortable angle.

“You alright?” Arado asks him. Arsenal looks up to see them peering intensely at him over the table. “I didn't think you'd actually show up.”

Arsenal smiles. “I wanted to show up fashionably late but I doubt it'd have the intended effect.”

“Cant!” Cant interjects, miming picking him up.

“I also wanted to arrive with my dignity intact,” Arsenal adds with as much nonchalance as possible.

There is a very good chance that some of the other lieutenants has seen that embarrassing incident of Cant bridal carrying him up to the top of the frigate after Daltos pulled his disappearing stunt, ages ago. Except for Cant, obviously, who is appearing to relish the glare being leveled at them.

Nobody brings it up so Arsenal is thankful for that. The other lieutenants start to file in, their chatter and bantering filling the room.

A few minutes later, Daltos strides into the room. He glances briefly at Arsenal, not bothering to let his gaze linger on him in favor of spreading the map of Pandora across the table and placing a handful of markers down. He suspects nothing, which is what Arsenal is counting on.

He lets Daltos have exactly half an hour of keeping the meeting on track before raising his hand.

“Can I ask you something?” He innocently inquires.

“What?” Daltos mildly frowns, supremely oblivious, putting down the marker he’d been holding to calmly eye Arsenal.

“When are we eating the pizzas in the fridge?” Arsenal puts down his hand after having asked that as loud as possible.

Instant silence descends. Everybody turns to look at Daltos. Ignoring their stunned looks, Daltos glares at Arsenal like he wants to murder him with his gaze alone. Job done, a satisfied Arsenal leans back with a smile.

“Pizza!” Hawker cries out, shattering the silence. “Since when did you get _pizza_?”

Clamouring from the other lieutenants join in, so several different voices (all of them excited) overlap, growing louder as they all try to talk to and over one another.

Arsenal watches Daltos’ expression flick through exasperation, consternation and resignation in three seconds. If he doesn't deliver, there is no way he'll be able to regain control without a fight on his hands. If he does happen to deliver, they'll just expect it in the future. 

Daltos caves, just like Arsenal expected. “You are all cleaning up the mess in here _after_ ,” He grouses, turning around to storm out of the room. 

Arsenal spies a livid expression being fully directed at him before the doors close. He stands up, gingerly nudging the stool back under the table.

“Hey Arado, save me some, will you?”

“Sure, if these assholes don't eat it all first,” Arado easily says.

“I'm going to go and hide. I think he was saving all that pizza for himself, so enjoy!” With that announcement, Arsenal limps out of the room to go back downstairs before Daltos can return to lynch him post-meeting. 

He had no such luck when Daltos corners him in a cargo bay later, dragging him by the back of the shirt behind two shipping containers. Arsenal is shoved against one, his back colliding painfully with the metal wall.

“Do you know _why_ I'm upset?” Daltos asks, his voice laced with a fury that he doesn’t bother to hide or suppress. His eyes are lit up with it, a rare sight. Even when he's beating someone's face in for stealing his lunch, the most he ever shows is irritation for having his time wasted. 

Arsenal swallows. Had he gone a little too far? Nah. “It's just _pizza_. What are you so worked up about?” He shrugs. 

Daltos says nothing, both his hands clenching and unclenching. “I was saving that for a special occasion, you _asshole_ ,” He reveals in a quiet voice that is at odds with his expression.

He turns to walk off in the direction of the nearest airlock, pulling out a cigarette with shaking hands. It tells Arsenal how badly he needs it because he doesn't even wait until he's out of the airlock before lighting up. Smoke trails after him like a rebuked child following their parent around.

Well, that changes everything.

Arsenal is left bewildered, standing in growing puddle of guilt that's of his own making. Daltos thinks he'd done it on _purpose_. Well, Arsenal had but he hadn't exactly known the pizzas were being saved for another time.

Raw ingredients for pizza are hard to come by, let alone anybody possessing the know-how and equipment to make it. Last time Arsenal checked, towns (even the ones under their watch) don't do deliveries to bandit country. It's a shame because most bandits would happily shell out the money and put aside their weapons to eat pizza.

Fucking fuck, he’s fucked big time and he's not sure how he can make it up to Daltos, let alone ever apologise.

As a result, Daltos avoids him. Usually he came down to the cargo bays to check in but he sends Arado in his place instead.

Arado wonders out loud at some point, “Dunno what's eating at him, but he seems grouchier than usual.” Arsenal can't even tell Arado what's going on; this is strictly between him and Daltos.

Later, in the mess hall before Arsenal can stop them, Hawker and Hurricane offer heartfelt thanks for letting them in on Daltos’ hidden stash of pizza. Arsenal knows Daltos is within earshot and so do the other two (which is perhaps what they'd intended). 

Behind him, Daltos slams a hand onto the table to stand and leave the mess hall. Bandits jump from the sound, soon averting their gazes when they see who caused it. His anger is palatable in the air, bitter, and it curls around Arsenal, leaving him mired in misery. 

They've never gone this long without talking to each other. Even after all their arguments and fights, they were perfectly civil to one another the next day.

Hawker and Hurricane flash identical, expectant grins. Arsenal thanks them (the words burning as they leave his mouth), then wolfs down his meal, throwing his stuff into his inventory before limping out into the corridor as fast as he can to call for Daltos. Unfortunately, Daltos is long gone.

When he checks the fridge, Daltos doesn't keep his food in his usual spot anymore. Arsenal has no fucking idea if he's actually been eating; he'd only seen him carry a mug of coffee out of the mess hall.

If he's starving himself because of what he, Arsenal, did in that he can no longer freeze food without somebody going through it in the hopes of finding more pizza, then _shit_.

He hadn't actually thought anybody would go that far. Daltos keeps rations in his room but those don't exactly make up what he needs to be eating if he doesn't, well, want to die from malnutrition (a more common occurrence than one would think, amongst bandits), of all things.

He's been going to see Sjin more often. Arsenal has no idea what they get up to (though some of the lieutenants are speculating like wild), but Daltos comes back from those meetings to go straight to sleep when he'd normally find him to have late-night chats.

In short, Arsenal misses his best friend (even the bickering). He can't think of how to make it up to him. For now, he reaches for the kitchen duty roster to scan the names listed there to see if they match up with who'd reported in or are skipping their jobs. 

He'll think of something eventually. There's a slim chance that Daltos will forgive and forget but he's never been inclined towards such, possessing a sharp, far reaching memory for even the littlest of slights.

Arsenal is halfway through making a list of people to track down when he notices one of the lieutenants assigned to kitchen duty has been absent for _three weeks_. That lieutenant hasn't been attending meetings either. Arsenal isn't that familiar with them but he knows what they look like.

Short, squat, always carrying a shotgun and more than happy to deprive anybody of their kneecaps with it on a dime: Fokker. 

The timing of their absence is far too coincidental. He separates the page from the crumpled lot and leaves the cargo bay to find Daltos up on the bridge. 

He takes his sweet time getting there, spotting Daltos crouching next to a console, untangling wiring with a practiced air. Arsenal makes his way over as best as he can when his leg is being the equivalent of a child in the full swing of a tantrum.

Spotting him, Daltos pauses to gesture for a nearby bandit to bring over Stirling’s stool.

Once Arsenal’s collapsed onto it and thanked the bandit, Daltos orders in a tone leaving no room for argument, “Alright, now you and the others can get out.”

Everybody but Arsenal and him hastily vacate the bridge, not wanting to know what'll happen if they stay. Daltos coolly regards him with a blank face, dropping the wires. It's been days since they last chatted but if he's still salty, then for once, Arsenal is more than happy to take the blame and admit his fault. 

“Daltos,” Arsenal begins in a even tone. It's a good thing he's sitting down. Falling over wouldn't have helped garner any sympathy whatsoever.

“ _Darcy_.” Oh, of fucking course Daltos would resort to mincing his name (mixing both real and alias together) just to annoy him. 

At least he’d ordered everyone else out first or used ‘D’arse’ in earshot. That one had taken weeks to _stamp_ out.

“I found something you might be interested in,” Arsenal forces himself to drawl in a jovial voice, pulling out the bit of paper he'd been so interested in to dangle it between his forefinger and thumb. For emphasis, he makes it do a tantalising dance. The side with all the writing is facing away from Daltos.

If Daltos wants to know what's on the paper, he'll have to bite and take it and be forced to interact with him. Daltos’ eyes flick from the paper to him. Arsenal knows he can't resist the bait because in the end, any dirt that he digs up that's too risky to relay over ECHO is worth taking a look at.

Daltos snatches the paper from him, flipping it over to scan it, his expression growing concerned as the pieces all start to add up. “Where’s Fokker been?”

What he really means is, ‘where is that little fucker so I can ditch him in the middle of the desert with nothing but the clothes on his back and watch the Drifters chase him down and eat him alive?’. 

“I think he hightailed it, after his attempt to infect you with plague failed,” Arsenal muses. “That'd explain why all the skag and rakk meat in the fridge looked a little off. Tasted odd, too.”

“That idiot couldn't have infected you or me, we’re both vaccinated,” Daltos returns the paper to him. Arsenal tucks it away as potential evidence to convince the others. 

“Fokker had no way of knowing that, so he had to hope it'd eventually get you. At least he failed,” Arsenal says. “He’s probably far away by now. Little dick’s always been flighty, even with a brawl that's halfway across the room.”

“I'll put out the alert anyway, start a hunt. It's been awhile since we last had one so they'll get a kick out of that.” Daltos adds, “I also might send Greif to Junker, try get some answers out of him since he and Fokker are fairly close.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

“Is that all?” Arsenal nods. “You can head back downstairs.” He rises, only to turn to him.

“Hey, I’m sorry.” Daltos raises an eyebrow. “I didn't know you were saving the pizzas for when the scouts got back.” He is silent for so long that Arsenal swallows any last hope of ever getting back in his good books. Daltos reaches out to grab his arm when he turns to go.

“I forgive you.” The words sound stilted, awkward, the air around them sinking as they're said out loud. Daltos takes his hand away.

“Are we…?” Arsenal can hardly believe his apology had been accepted, just like that.

“Yeah, we’re good.” Daltos awkwardly turns away from him to remove a panel from the console he'd been working on.

Arsenal takes that as his cue to leave, his body as light as a feather. He would have skipped out if he’d been physically capable of it.

It’s not like Daltos will ever randomly up and leave, vanish or die, so why does he have a gut feeling that he's narrowly averted a personal crisis by apologising now rather than later?

Meanwhile, Daltos makes a mental note to hire some Vault Hunters or someone to kill Fokker before Fokker can do so first.

\--

Sjin looks at himself in the mirror as he adjusts his tie, smoothing back his hair once more for good measure.

“This time for sure!” He tells himself, puffing himself up so that he’s standing up straight, head held high and full of optimism. He doesn't technically have to go to the effort of going through the same song and dance every single time he invites Daltos over to dinner.

Why yes, their dinners have been been increasingly pushed back later to accommodate Sjin’s increasing trips to the mining rig and back, on top of Daltos’ erratic schedule in maintaining his hold over the east coast and setting up more strongholds on the west coast.

They both don't care what people think what they get up to, at this late an hour. It's just two people (doesn't matter that one is of a respectable profession and the other isn't) getting together to eat, drink and talk about whatever happens to be on their minds.

It's not often Sjin gets to wear a suit since he likes his comfortable and yet, fashionable outfits. Suits are nice but there's a formality to them that feels strange on him (Sips makes them work somehow even with the most ridiculous ties he can find, buy and wear).

He’d jokingly told Daltos to ‘wear something nice next time’. Daltos had laughed and said ‘I’m not promising you anything’, waving off Sjin’s offer to lend him one. 

Sjin can't help but let his curiosity roam in regards to that. Daltos has always shown up in bandit clothing; he pities him a little for not having much choice in what to wear for these dinners.

The doorbell rings.

Elsa meows, rearing back on her hind legs to scratch and paw at Sjin’s bedroom door. She's learned to associate the sound with pending food. Sjin carries her so she doesn't bolt straight for the door and ambush his guest by purring and tripping him as he comes in (that hasn't happened yet but Sjin’s done that more than once).

Holding Elsa tightly, Sjin opens the door with the lowest of expectations. What he gets instead are said expectations being exceeded in the best way possible. He almost drops Elsa.

Daltos is dressed in a formal Dahl military uniform. The uniform itself is a plain dark grey with a simple black bandolier slung over one shoulder. He looks the slightest bit uncomfortable to be seen wearing it, clearly more used to his bandit clothing.

The overall effect is hardly resplendent and yet, Sjin finds himself still trying to process the fact that Daltos has actually shown up in a suit. That should be _illegal_ because it makes him look sterner with a more grounded and imposing figure, which Sjin so very likes-Sjin does not possess a wide enough vocabulary for describing the effect it's having on _him_.

Sjin tries not to stare and asks in a mildly strangled tone, ”Where did you get _that_?” He remembers to hang onto Elsa so she doesn't leap out of his arms.

“Well I burned mine a long time ago,” Daltos starts to explain as he steps over the welcome mat and into Sjin’s home. He pauses to pet Elsa (he’s not wearing gloves either, an unusual occurrence). “So I just raided one of the other dead Captains’ lockers, got lucky and had a bandit tailor this one to my size.” 

He doesn’t mention that Parvis had been more than happy to help him out, thanks to Ravs’ meddling.

That said, Arsenal had pretty much reacted the same way Sjin had when seeing him in said uniform; Arsenal kept sneaking glances over at him when giving him a lift to the Fast Travel Station (a first for him; he usually preferred to let his lackeys do the job for obvious reasons). Daltos hadn’t seen what the glance consisted of but he’s willing to bet Arsenal is trying not to laugh at him.

The truth was that Arsenal had been trying extraordinarily hard not to comment ‘you should wear that more often, it looks good on you’. The glance had been nostalgic but it’d been too dark for Daltos to see. In any case, Daltos had been too occupied on keeping an eye out for any threats from the turret.

Sjin accepts his explanation without questioning it, his feet automatically taking charge by leading Daltos into the dining room. He must have put Elsa down since he finds his hands are empty when he sits down at the table.

Nevermind, he glimpses her tail disappearing under the table. Too bad Sherlock’s not available or else he'd have asked him to catsit her again. 

During the dinner, Sjin drops a million hints. By the end of it, Daltos leaves none the wiser. 

“Thanks for the dinner.” To Elsa, he says, “See you next time. Don’t cause Sjin too much trouble.”

Sjin curses at his life once the front door’s closed. Why is it always the dense ones he ends up picking?

\--

Sjin looks at himself in the mirror as he adjusts his tie, fingers languidly smoothing stray strands of his hair back into place.

“This time for sure,” He softly tells himself, unable to look his reflection in the eye, dreading what another failure will do for his psyche and resolve. Really, he should stop. Nothing is ever going to happen with him and Daltos.

One last shot; he’ll throw in the towel after.

Sjin can't help but brood, his temper already frayed and continuing to unravel as dinner proceeds. It's not bloody fair, they've known each other for _months_ now. If it'd been any other person, surely they'd have addressed the issue or reciprocated by now, but no, history is repeating itself in a vicious cycle that is going to continue if he doesn't do something.

Without warning, he explodes at Daltos, “What am I doing _wrong_ , I’m doing everything I can to make you notice me and you don’t even realize it!” He adds just as heatedly, “What does that other person have that I _don’t_?” 

Elsa skitters out from under the table, hissing as she flees the room. Good, he'd rather not have her stick around to see how ugly things are becoming.

Daltos takes offence, immediately snapping back with, “If you’re not enjoying these little breaks that _you_ arranged, I’m more than happy to leave so that you can go running back to your CEO-”

“I can’t, because he’s _dead_!” Sjin stands up (with Daltos mirroring him, plates and glass clinking as the table is upsetted), shaking on the spot and chest heaving, on the verge of tears. Enough is enough. If this is how he has to play, then so be it.

Slowly, Daltos comes to an awful realization. “Sjin.”

“ _What_?” Sjin blinks back hot, frustrated tears so he can see Daltos looking at him with pitiful scorn (it shouldn't hurt but it _does_ , does he mean so little to him?).

“I can’t be him and will never be.”

“I know. Just.” Sjin inhales, then exhales. His breathing is shaky in spite of having tried to take a calming breath and having failed that, is doing his best not to hiccup. “Why can’t you acknowledge me? At least you can do that, right?” He looks right at him, his gaze pleading.

Daltos looks away with a broken sigh, his hand coming up to run over his face. “I can’t do that either.”

“Is it because you still have _feelings_ for that other person?” Sjin snidely retorts.

“I literally can’t have those sorts of feelings, even though I’ve been in relationships. They never worked out as a result.” Daltos gives a bitter laugh as he drops his hand to his side. “Yeah, I know something’s incredibly wrong with me but there’s nothing I can do about it.” He doesn’t mention that it’d only bothered him a few times before to this degree; this is the fifth time.

They both retreat into the silence of their own thoughts, at a loss for how to proceed.

“Did the other person know?” Sjin ventures at last.

“Yes. And no, it never stopped him.” Daltos replies, his voice hardening as long suppressed memories threaten to surface. Sjin’s retort had cut him, more deeply than Sjin realises. “And don’t think it means the same thing can happen between you and me because it _won’t_.” 

His voice is akin to the effect of dumping a bucket of icy water over Sjin that sends a chill right through him, down to his bones, numbing him all over.

“It’s okay. I’ll get over it. Eventually.” Sjin doesn't mean to sound so uncertain but this is the second time the people he's grown attached to have failed him; there won't be a third time, not if he can help it.

Daltos looks at him. Sjin keeps his head bent, refusing to meet his eyes. Nothing he says or do will help, so he chooses to leave.

It'd been a wise decision on his part, once he's had time to think about precisely when he should have left; the signs had all been so _obvious_. He swears to himself to never let this happen ever again. It’s not worth what he and the other person are putting each other through, regardless of whether they're aware or blissfully ignorant.

Elsa follows him as far as the door, meowing pitifully at his early departure. 

He bids her goodbye, forcing himself not to think about Sjin’s betrayed expression. It’s dredging up nothing but pain inside of him because it mirrors the other Captain’s face moments after the trigger had been pulled, irreversibly changing both their life and his.

It’s the last time he and Sjin ever meet in person.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (you do know that the stomach isn’t the only way to someone’s heart, right? you can always just reach in and rip it out instead. that works for me!)
> 
> behold, teagstime‘s only contribution in writing to date is in the form of the first paragraph of the chapter summary. it was just too good to not use. thank you.
> 
> for the purposes of this chapter, i came up with twenty-five unique lieutenants, each of them with their own traits and roles within daltos’ gang. a gang as large as his needs lackeys so that it runs like clockwork. however disorganized it appears, he makes it work. 
> 
> i want to thank teagstime and doublearrows for being incredibly patient for helping the idea take shape and working out each of the dynamics between each of the lieutenants and how they relate to their boss.
> 
> while a lot of those lieutenants didn’t get to show up (quite a few of them were namedropped but they didn’t make a proper appearance, which saddens me since they’re all pretty interesting characters in their own right). only one of those lieutenants is based off a friend of the yogscast. they’re pretty obscure. i’ll upload their profile and sherlock’s, in the next two days. the two will show up in ‘tlvh’ but it won’t be for a while.
> 
> i particularly enjoyed coming up with aspects of how a bandit would live on pandora and how close-knit most of them are with one another (even if half the time is spent fighting each other over the most asinine things). the lifestyle sucks but they make do with what they have. you got to admire that, at least.
> 
> daltos has a complicated relationship with most of his lieutenants. as he mentioned, he considers them wholly expendable but at the same time, consider the shit he puts up with on a daily basis. if he really did think of them as expendable, he’d have long since replaced the ones that really annoyed him ages ago.
> 
> he keeps his personal life under wraps and doesn't take kindly to those who try to pry into it. also, remember the last time he let got that involved with someone? that ended horribly for him and the other party so he's not keen on repeating the experience, however much he thinks he’s gotten over it because he hasn’t. he mirrors zylus in that aspect.
> 
> out of the twenty-five lieutenants, the only one he talks to on a daily, casual basis is arsenal. with the others, he doesn’t think they’d sympathize with him if he ever opened up about what’s on his mind given that they gossip a lot more about him than he thinks they do? they’re also more concerned about him than they let on, minus the ones who really do want him dead.
> 
> in regards to sjin, sjin projected a lot of his loneliness and grief at thinking sips is dead onto daltos. most of the scenes written with sjin and sips were intended to serve as parallels between him and daltos. daltos and sips are similar but have some minor differences between them. this served as the main reason why sjin immediately latched onto him as a way (however shitty it is) to cope with what he’s going through.
> 
> this also means that sjin has a knack for picking the wrong people and putting them on a pedestal. it’s not a healthy mindset to have, especially if he expects them to eventually change to suit how he sees them.
> 
> if sips knew, he hid it pretty well. there wouldn’t have been an ending where everybody’s happy even if they’d addressed it. while it wasn’t ever technically resolved since that’d demand the impossible of them, daltos and sjin now have to live with it.
> 
> they can’t ever really meet up in person again without it being incredibly awkward. they do communicate via ECHO from that point on, but all talk has fallen back onto strictly business matters. 
> 
> whether or not sjin has forgiven him or moved on entirely remains to be seen.
> 
> there is some blatant and subtle psychological manipulation going on with the stuff he pulls in regards to daltos (ironically enough, which daltos was aware of but didn’t know how to address). it's a complicated issue for multiple reasons. the main gist of it is that the two are taking advantage of each other’s resources. it plays a later role in the stuff that goes down in ‘tlvh’. that stuff is stuff you’ve already seen (chapter three and seven) and stuff you haven’t seen that’ll be covered in later chapters (including the consequences).
> 
> one last thing: one pandoran year equates to ten years. now think about long zylus and daltos have been stuck on Pandora and how long they've spent hating each other. you're welcome.
> 
> with this final chapter, this multi-chaptered fic is now finished! there are two standalone btb fics, one of which i’d like to make a start on so that means that ‘tlvh’ is still on a bit of a break for the time being.
> 
> thank you for reading! doodles by siins are over [here](http://borderlandscast.tumblr.com/tagged/beyond-the-borderlands%3A-how-to-influence-bandits-and-befriend-them/).


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